Festivities

Why do we party?

Notting Hill Carnival in London, August 29, 2022. REUTERS - MAJA SMIEJKOWSKA

Text by: Olivier Favier Follow

7 mins

In most cases, the party is an exception and a paroxysm, it punctuates life by following the calendar of the seasons or history.

It puts us in contact with the great events of life, starting with birth and death, it questions both our belonging to the community and, sometimes also, our ability to subvert it.

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“

”, wrote Antonio Gramsci in 1916 before adding: “

 A recent survey reveals that, like the Italian philosopher and political theorist, nearly half of the population would experience some form of anxiety as the end of year celebrations approach.

We go so far as to speak of “natalophobia”.

The reasons for this are diverse, from the rejection of the commercial party and joy on command – these are the arguments put forward by Gramsci – to the fear of loneliness, passing through family tensions or the incomprehension of loved ones in the face of choices of lives criticized.

All of these explanations basically decline the same fear of seeing their exclusion from the social body underlined, whether this is usually suffered, desired or simply assumed.

However, the party cannot be reduced to a demonstration of conformity.

What then is its deeper meaning?

The party, between conformism and transgression

In the 1950 edition of

, the sociologist Roger Caillois recalled “ 

”.

"

," he explained.

»

What he described evokes for us the meaning of the carnival, at least when it retains its transgressive function,

 : one can change gender and social status there, put on the trappings of an animal or simulate madness, giving free rein to normally sanctioned behavior, such as drunkenness on the public highway.

In Gras de Douarnenez, in Finistère, it is customary to say that in this period “

The carnival scenes shown in Ariane Mouchkine's film

(1978) remind us that in the past, the reversal of values ​​could go much further, and affect the social and political organization of the community.

“

,” continued Roger Caillois, “

The celebration is then a "factor of alliance", in that it creates a common moment to reform the community, whether religious - for believers -, family - for most of us - or bearer of a national, local, professional or political identity.

Religious or secular, the party lives as long as it is popular

In Saint-Étienne, in the Loire, Sainte-Barbe, protector of miners, took on the appearance of a day of commemoration with the end of coal mining.

In Lyon, the

originates from the procession organized towards the hill of Fourvière by the town authorities on the day of the Nativity of the Virgin, September 8, to prevent the plague epidemic, in 1653. Two centuries later, in 1852, the inauguration of a golden statue of the Virgin having been postponed from September 8 to December 8 due to flooding, it finally takes place again in the rain.

The population decides to place the lighting initially planned for the gathering on the windowsills.

The illuminations became a tradition that spread to other towns in the region before becoming, under municipal impetus, a popular festival – touristic and commercial – whose religious origin is often forgotten, or relegated to the background.

If many festivals in France have a Christian origin – the dates chosen, such as December 25 for Christmas, opportunely taking the place of the great pagan rituals, such as the birth of Christ moved to the winter solstice –, the Republic and trade union or political movements have brought another solemn or memorial calendar: July 14 of course, as a national holiday, but also the remembrance of the armistices of the two world wars, November 11 and May 8, or Labor Day on the 1st May, accompanied by a union parade.

Other anniversaries are as much opportunities to come together as to reaffirm one's differences, from the Pride March created in New York on June 27, 1970 in commemoration of the Stonewall riots the previous year, to the

created in 1930 by Marcel Cachin, then director of the eponymous communist newspaper.

Mother's Day, often associated with Marshal Pétain, who in 1942 gave it an almost liturgical value in direct connection with the Vichy motto, "Work, family, homeland", has a much more complex history, which dates back to ancient Greece. and served, towards the end of the 19th century, the interests of pronatalist propaganda, in a France with demography at half mast.

When the party dialogues with decline and death

If the party is a parenthesis, explains the anthropologist Jean Duvignaud in

(1977), it was able, when it lost its exceptional character, to engulf entire nations or cultures.

In the 18th century, the Carnival of Venice lasted six months over three distinct periods of the year, from the beginning of October to Advent, then from December 26 to Mardi Gras, and another two weeks after Ascension.

The city where one lived so often masked thus became the paradise of clandestine exchanges, diplomatic inter alia, but the serene Republic revealed especially in its excesses that its thousand-year-old history was soon to be completed.

Conquered by Bonaparte who banned the carnival in 1797, it was immediately ceded to the Austrians who restored it, but its splendor had disappeared.

35 years later, testifies the German writer and publicist Heinrich Heine, it is still in the middle of the carnival, in Paris this time, that the first cholera epidemic is triggered.

“ 

he writes,

»

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