Launching the Miraculous French Culture blog! 🇫🇷🐞🐈‍⬛

We're happy and excited to start the "Miraculous French Culture" project and share this blog with you!

We're a group of French people and/or people living/having lived in France or in French-speaking countries (for now composed of @2manyfandoms2count, @naimea-fanart, @damelicorne, @bouyonbouya, @miraculousbugaboii, @mistwatchesml, @fabulousladypapillon, @kumalimited, @little-mari-on-a-roof and @emsylcatac). We'll share informations about French culture in miraculous here to help you understand some aspects of the show better or the cultural context it's happening in.

You can also send us questions in our askbox, and we'll be happy to answer you as soon as we can!

✓ What we will answer:

✗ What we will NOT answer:

📣 UPDATE: The discord server is ready! You can request to join it by filling out this form!

Have a nice day and we hope to see you around soon 👋

🗣 [Blog & discord server update]

Hi everyone!

As you may have noticed, we haven't been very active in the past year. The whole team has been extremely busy with life, and a lot of the asks we receive are very time-consuming in terms of research, details, and more often than not require on top of it all pretty long answers. We don't always have the energy nor the time to deal with them.

We sincerely apologize for all the asks that haven't gotten an answer, and those who got an answer really late. We hope you can understand ♥︎

As for the discord server, we've forgotten to check the form regularly: if you had applied and never got the link to join, it's probably why. We sincerely apologize to everyone who sent a request and didn't hear back from us. We've just cleared the form of all the answers, so if you want to join, now is a good time to request joining as we'll keep an eye on the form in the next couple of weeks: click here!

Of course, if in the future you request to join the server and don't hear back from us in the next 2 weeks / month, don't hesitate to send us an ask as a reminder 😂 the requirements stay the same though: as to keep the server as friendly & safe as possible, we reserve the right to deny access to the server if we consider your content somewhat racist, LGBTQ+ phobic, sexist or featuring any other kind of form of bigotry. Denial of access can also include not watching Miraculous or too much salt or hate towards the show.

Thanks everyone for your understanding, and for the support we've received of course!!

Hey there!

It's not really a custom here as it could be in America but some schools may organize some individually if it's part of their pedagogical project.

Hope that helped!

Hi there!

The Mayor elections in Paris (like the ones in other big French cities) run in two rounds: the first takes place in March, the second in June.

Hope it helps!

Hi!

We made a post last year with some French traditions for Christmas and New Year's, which you can find here!

A lot of the traditions are kind of shared with neighbouring countries, like the Christmas markets, which are also traditional in Germany for instance, or Advent Calendars which are a very popular tradition (there are some for everyone, with chocolates, teas, toys e.g. Playmobil/Lego, and even a few ML ones!) but there are some things that are fairly unique to us like:

🎄 Drinking champagne on Christmas Eve: just because, champagne being French, it's a tradition that originated here 😉

🎄 The Réveillon de Noël = Christmas Eve dinner: it's a moment where families will gather before exchanging presents (either after dinner on the 24th, or on the morning of the 25th). It generally involves oysters and other shellfish, smoked salmon/trout and foie gras (goose liver) as starters, and a stuffed pintade (guineafowl) as the main course, and for dessert...

🎄 The bûche de Noël: it's the traditional dessert for Christmas. It's a cake that's shaped like a log (which is what bûche means), that you buy at a bakery, a supermarket, or that you can make yourself! There's a bunch of different flavours, ranging from chocolate to raspberry, passionfruit, or even more novel options. It can be a proper cake, with a génoise base, or have a more mousse-y consistency, with a craquant base.

🎄 Putting your slippers (chaussons) under the Christmas tree: unlike other cultures, the tradition isn't to hang stockings, but to leave your slippers out! Father Christmas then piles the presents around them, and adds some clementimes and other sweets in them.

🎄 Bonus for Christian people: the Santons de Provence. They're little ceramic figurines that are a part of Nativity decorations; there's of course the "core Nativity" (Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the donkey and the ox ± the three kings), but then you can add various other figures for instance representing more or less anachronistic professions like merchants, lawyers, chocolate-makers and the like.

Hope it helps, and happy holidays!

Hi!

Bakeries often have a little bell that rings when you open the door, so if the bakers/bakery employees are in the shop when you enter, they'll notice you immediately and greet you with "Bonjour Monsieur/Madame", followed by some variation of "Qu'est-ce que je vous sert aujourd'hui?" (What would you like today?)

You might not get greeted immediately if they're in the back e.g. getting a fresh tray of something for the display (but they'll say hi when they come back into the shop), or if there's a queue and they're already helping people (in which case they say hi when it's your turn to be served).

Hope it helps!

Hi!

It's not that people don't do it in France, because it's become a more common concept with Anglo-Saxon media, it's just that it's not a particularly classic tradition in France haha (despite mistletoe, aka gui, being a fairly common tree parasite outside of Paris) - people really don't go out of their way to get some to hang around 😉 There is a Celtic tradition to walk or kiss under the mistletoe on New Year's Eve for good luck for the year to come, but it's not super common.

If you ask French people, mistletoe is probably more linked to druids, specifically Panoramix in the Astérix comics (Getafix in English)!

Hope it helps!

Hi!

It really depends on the type of business, the timeline of the hire, and the method:

There's nothing in the law that forbids someone from hiring their spouse, even in politics! But it needs to be done fairly, through a standard hiring process, and with a real job at the end (i.e. there must be a real position, with real tasks and responsibilities).

Favouritism towards the spouse (or prejudice against the competitors for a position) in the hiring process is a criminal offence that's punished by 3 years of imprisonment and a 45k € fine. This is especially scrutinised in big companies/corporations to avoid nepotism or embezzlement.

The same applies to favouritism in terms of treatment of the employees, for instance in terms of pay: that can be justified by seniority, professional experience, a type of position (for instance an employee vs an intern), or e.g. if a position needs to be filled and no one's applying; if there's a suspicion that the CEO's spouse is being overpaid for no valid reason, an investigation can be initiated.

If you take a small-ish, family-owned business, the rule is the same, but people also might not particularly bat an eye at family being hired (e.g. if Tom and Sabine were to hire their son-in-law in the bakery).

Hope this helped!

Hey!

Yes it's correct! PDG stands for "Président-directeur général", which literally would be translated as "President and Chief Executive Officer" 😉

Hi!

Yes, Paris does have a Chinatown-equivalent, we answered an ask about it here 😊

There are Lunar/Chinese New Year celebrations in Paris, held mostly there, and in the 4th arrondissement, next to the Mairie de Paris!

It would indeed be very interesting to have an episode like that! And we might have something like that in the future, given that (minor spoiler alert) the location appears in some episodes of S5 👀

Hope it helps!

Hi!

It's not an easy topic to find info about even when you speak French and know what to look out for 😂

I found one all boys school in Paris in my search, but no all girls schools; gender-designated schools have indeed become very rare since the 1970s, when a law made mixed education compulsory (the Haby law). All public schools nowadays are mixed gendered, and the very few private schools that aren't seem to be religious schools.

There do seem to be a few more private schools that are mixed in the sense that both boys and girls attend, but have gender-assigned classes, but they're still a rarity; again, those all seem to be religious. An example in Paris is Stanislas, which gives the option of being in a mixed class or not in collège (but not in primary school or lycée).

Hope it helps!

Hi !

It depends on the specificities of the region and the class, really.

The most common field trips happen locally for normal students (it's less expensive), so they can visit stuff in the region: your local castle, a museum, a forest, etc. In Paris, there are plenty of choices! There are obviously a lot of museums, but we also have easy access to places a little further out in the region, like the Fontainebleau forrest, some quarries for geology, and the Versailles castle and gardens, for instance.

Longer field trips often occur when the class is doing an optional class of some sort (intensive English, Italian or Latin, theater...); students then go to places related to those options (England, Ireland, Italy, theater shows...). They can also happen in link with classes, especially for science (going to a volcano, a mountain, a lake to observe biodiversity...). It is usually educative in some way.

Finally, schools can also organize longer trips that take place further away, such as a ski week, a week at the sea... It's more expensive and difficult to organize for teachers but it's the occasion for students that would never go to those places to discover them.

In public schools, the school trips are generally covered by local subsidies (e.g. the Mairie de Paris), and by the coopérative scolaire, which we talked about in a bit more depth here. The goal is to bring the price as low as possible, to ask as little money from parents as possible, hence enabling greater access to these opportunities.

Hope that helped!

TW : MENTIONS OF DRUGS AND ALCOHOL

Hi !

In France, drugs are strictly prohibited by law or strictly regulated:

For drug perception, I'd say it depends on the drugs, and of course, on the person's views. But more generally :

Hopes that helped !

Hey there, sorry for the late answer, hope it did not disturb your writing process!

To my knowledge, the usual procedure for an elected individual discovered misusing public money is for them to resign from their position, as they are often sentenced to ineligibility and to prison.

The authority able to deliver such sentences is the tribunal correctionnel (i.e criminal court, a court for individuals' crimes).

Regarding elections, according to the Conseil Constitutionnel (Constitutional Council, France's institution in charge of making sure the Constitution is respected) :

Hope that helped!