Noël Cowards

A big difference between France (and much of Europe) and the US is the way we shop.

The US is a much more consumer-driven economy, where the shoppers' wallets drive the market. So, the vendors have learned to take back control of the market by inventing needs that the consumers never knew needed to be filled! (Hello, Chipwich anyone?)

In France, there are those who supply and those who demand. There's a product or service, and if you want it, you buy it -- end of transaction. And, most shocking to most Americans, there are very few sales BEFORE Christmas. After all, why should a store lower the prices on goods at the time when people most want to buy them!

Sales are in fact planned by the Ministry of Finance and the Departmental governments! If you can read French, you can click here for the Winter 2007 schedule. In Alpes-Maritimes (the department where I live) the sales start on 10 January (always a Wednesday, thank you) at 8am (promptly or thereabouts), and end on 10 February. End of discussion.

Another big difference is that in France you are not allowed to shop on Sundays. Or rather, you can't shop on Sundays because stores are not allowed to be open. According to the Code du Travail (Labor Laws), work is forbidden on Sundays. End of discussion. Well, except for hotels, restaurants, bars, cafes, bakeries, tobacconists, museums, DVD and video rental shops, garden centers and computer helpdesks. Oh yeah, and food stores and markets can open until noon. And, of course, if you own your own business and run it with family members (who are not classified as "employees"), you can pretty much do your own things. But, other than that, work is forbidden.

So, what is to be done in a year when Christmas and New Year's Day fall on a Monday? How are French people supposed to do their last-minute rushing around on Saturday, then spend all day Sunday doing nothing but going to a hotel, restaurant, bar, cafe, bakery, etc.? Well, luckily, the Code du Travail allows for five (go on, count them) Sundays a year where one of the non-excepted business can be open. This year, shop keepers saved their wild card Sundays for December 3, 10, 17, 24 and 31! (Oh, so THAT'S what's meant by "in a month of Sundays"...) And, on these shopping days, designated as "exceptional openings" (and which are usually quite lackluster), there are no parking spaces available, and the shops are a mob scene!

Why, then, is there not a bigger push to abolish this law? After all, it's certainly not the Church that is demanding Sunday be treated as the Lord's day, as France has legally been a secular country since 1905! No, in fact, it is the consumers themselves who don't want it to change! In some strange sense of solidarity with their fellow French workers, they would not want Pierre and Marie to be forced to work on Sunday if they preferred to spend the day at a museum, stop off and buy some potting soil on the way home, then sit on hold for 90 minutes trying to get help on their Internet connection.

Or, maybe they're just afraid that one day they'll be the ones forced to work on Sunday, sharing their surliness and apathy with the rest of the French public.