Wednesday, October 31, 2007

What is the Toussaint?

Tomorrow is November 1st and it's also the Toussaint (Tous les Saints) in France. Everything will go close and it's bank holiday. The festival of All Saints, also sometimes known as All Saints' Day is in honour of all the saints, known and unknown.
People go to cemeteries, put flowers and the graves. It's an opportunity to gather with your family and all your relatives.

Talking about cemetries, do you know the one called Père Lachaise. If you don't, it's fine but you probably know the people who are burried there: Jim Morrisson, Oscar Wilde, Frederic Chopin, Maria Callas, Edith Piaf, Yves Montand, Marcel Proust and so on... Yeah a lot of celebrities actually!
About the Jim Morrisson one: "Permanent crowds and occasional vandalism surrounding this tomb have caused tensions with the families of other, less famous, deceased. The cemetery has been forced to hire a full-time security guard for the grave. Many other parts of the cemetery have been defaced with arrows purporting to indicate the direction toward "Jim", though even these defacements have in many cases been defaced themselves, resulting in arrows that point in two directions." (from wikipedia.org)

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