Letter from Paris: If the French Senate today endorses a law passed by the National Assembly earlier this month, Whit Monday will be a public holiday for the last time this May 31st, writes Lara Marlowe.
Whit Monday falls 50 days after Easter. In Ireland, it lost its religious significance in the 1960s when the government decided to make the first Monday in June a bank holiday.
Ciarán Mac Guill from Dundalk is a leading opponent of the change in France, though his late father participated in the commission that ended Whit Monday in Ireland. It will, he fears, endanger a three-day Pentecost pilgrimage from Notre Dame de Paris to Notre Dame de Chartres, which is attended by dozens of Irish Catholics.
The French branch of the GAA is also campaigning for the preservation of Whit Monday. The CFTC (French Confederation of Christian Workers) has led opposition among French trade unions. And the city of Nîmes is in despair, because its three-day bullfight festival, which draws over one million visitors on Pentecost weekend, is threatened.
Paris adopted Whit Monday 130 years ago, under pressure from French bankers and stockbrokers whose European counterparts took the day off. Its suppression speaks volumes about the government's ability to dream up inappropriate solutions to serious problems.
It all started last August, when France discovered that up to 15,000 elderly people had died in the record-setting heat wave. The Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, suggested that the French create a "day of national solidarity," on which all French people would work for the benefit of the elderly.
All salaries earned on one day - €1.9 billio- are to be paid into a special fund. But sceptics doubt the money will actually help senior citizens. The law notes that half of it will pay outstanding deficits.
And there's the precedent of the vignette or car tax which was recently done away with. It was established in the 1950s to help the elderly. "But it just got churned into state coffers," says Joseph Thouvenel of the CFTC. Like the present French television licence fee, the car tax cost more to collect than it earned.
Opponents of the law accuse the government of cynically exploiting the emotion that followed the premature deaths of thousands of old people to devise a money-making scheme. "The State lost €1.76 billion in revenue when it lowered income tax," Mr Thouvenel notes.
"They're trying to get it back, but by taxing those who can't afford it. It's blatantly unfair. It's gadgetry, a makeshift patch-up."
The creation of yet another government fund is certain to spawn more bureaucracy. The economic think tank OFCE predicts the suppression of Whit Monday could destroy 25,000 jobs, mainly in tourism.
Faced with an outcry over the measure, Mr Raffarin said workers and employers could sort out which bank holiday they would work. But in the event they fail to agree, the law specifies, Whit Monday will be suppressed by default.
The unions refuse to negotiate on principle, and employers dread repeating the marathon talks that preceded enforcement of the 35-hour working week; so Whit Monday it will be.
Mr Thouvenel is against the very principle of forcing people to work without pay on a specific day. "The last government to do this was the Soviet Union, with its 'communist Saturdays' to finance the party," he says. "It hasn't happened in France since the Middle Ages, when proceeds from the corvée (a day of servitude) went to the church."
France has 13 bank holidays each year - an average number for Europe - compared to 10 in Ireland and nine in Britain. But the figures are misleading. The French "lose" bank holidays that fall on a Saturday or Sunday, but frequently take off "bridging" days to connect a holiday Tuesday or Thursday with a weekend.
Paid annual holidays range from five to 12 weeks every year. But the French are not lazy, Mr Thouvenel insists. "They're more productive because they take time to rest," he adds.
"It is ironic that most of the bank holidays in revolutionary, secular France are Catholic holidays, including the Feast of the Assumption on August 15th and All Saints on November 1st," says Ciarán Mac Guill.
A recent proposal to observe Muslim and Jewish festivals was quashed by the government. In Ireland, Mr Mac Guill adds, "we've got very unreligious holidays, because on independence it wasn't a priority to enforce Catholic holidays which the English didn't allow."
Despite the likelihood that this will be France's last Whit Monday, its supporters have not lost heart. President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing did away with the May 8th anniversary marking the end of the second World War, because it revived memories of France's division during that conflict. But his successor, François Mitterrand, restored the holiday.
"Whatever this government does," Mr Thouvenel says, "you can be sure the next one will undo it."