Summer holidays are sacred in France, where paid leave is considered not a perk but a right. It all dates back to the summer of 1936, when a progressive new government rewrote French labour law to introduce paid time off for all employees.
The foundations of France's relationship with holidays were laid 88 years ago, over a few heady months.
It began in May, when parliamentary elections swept left-wing parties to power. United in an alliance called the Popular Front, they promised bold reform amid economic depression and rising fascism.
French workers, who had been battling for better conditions for several years, took it as a signal that the time was ripe to make demands.
Throughout that month, as they waited for the new government to take office, they occupied factories, shops and workplaces across the country in what came to be known as "the joyful strike": not just defiant but optimistic, even celebratory.
There was music, dancing, picnics and card games on the picket lines – almost as if a holiday had already begun.
By the time France's new socialist prime minister, Léon Blum, took office in early June, more than two million workers had downed tools.
Paid leave hadn't originally been part of his programme, and several attempts to introduce it in the previous decade had stalled.
But now trade unions dared to ask for more. Within days, Blum's government had added paid holidays to the list of new rights they would enshrine in labour law, alongside the freedom to strike, collective bargaining and a cap on standard working hours at 40 per week.
A bill entitling every employee to two weeks off after a year's work – with no halt in wages – passed almost unanimously in parliament and became law on 20 June 1936.
France's holidays had officially started.
Learning to take a break
Vacation wasn't new to everyone in France. Civil servants had enjoyed it since 1854, when Napoléon III made France the first country in the world to mandate paid time off, albeit for a tiny fraction of the workforce.
Some public-sector employees, white-collar workers and artisans also secured it in the first decades of the 20th century, but the gains were piecemeal.
The 1936 law was the first to roll out paid leave to every employee as standard – including those who'd never had a chance to holiday before.
The government saw its role as helping workers make the most of their new leisure time, but not – unlike fascist regimes of the time – dictating how they spent it.
Blum named a young lawyer, Léo Lagrange, France's first ever undersecretary of state for sports and leisure. "Our aim is to restore a sense of joy and dignity," Lagrange declared that June.
"The masses must have all kinds of leisure activities at their disposal. Let everyone choose. We must open all the roads so that everyone can participate in the free and fair game of democracy."
In that spirit, Lagrange negotiated with the state rail company to offer discounted train fares for working-class holidaymakers.
Reserved for people travelling in third class, covering at least 200km and spending five days or more away, his "people's annual leave tickets" were 40 percent cheaper than standard.
They went on sale on 3 August 1936; some 300,000 were snapped up that month alone.
"Getting away is the first joy that holidays bring to city dwellers trapped all year in their tasks, their worries and conventions," gushed one 1936 newsreel.
"At the beach, parents and children share an equal footing, with children enjoying almost complete independence and parents feeling their youth restored."
A legacy of leisure
The enthusiasm wasn't universal. France's reactionary press published disdainful caricatures of uncouth labourers overrunning resorts once reserved for wealthier sorts, and nicknamed Lagrange the "minister of laziness".
Nor could everyone afford to get away, even with discounts. And the new law left plenty of people out: employees who'd been in their job less than 12 months weren't entitled to the full two weeks' leave, while workers not contracted to an employer weren't guaranteed anything at all.
But the summer of 1936 would ultimately change France's habits, its economy and its landscape.
Over 1.5 million "Lagrange tickets" would be sold the following year; a version of the rail pass still exists today.
New youth hostels and campgrounds sprang up around the country, while bicycle sales soared.
The seeds of a mass tourism industry were sown, from more affordable resorts to guidebooks leading people into new corners of the country, or the roadside restaurants that would come to line motorways running from cities to the coast.
It also the beginning of an idea that gradually took hold in France: that holidays are both "a right and a duty", according to anthropologist Saskia Cousin Kouton, who studies tourism habits.
They're perceived as a labour right earned through industrial action, she told RFI. "But they're also seen by families as a parental duty – in other words, not taking your children on holiday is felt as a failure."
It comes down to the same notion Lagrange articulated: that holidaying, like going to school or voting, is part of life in a democracy.
Following in his footsteps, French employers continue to sponsor trips for workers and their families, while every summer and winter, subsidised holiday camps offer children chances to swim and ski that their parents couldn't otherwise afford.
It's a legacy that would make Blum proud. As the former prime minister looked back in 1942, when the joyful summer of '36 seemed long gone, he placed France's free time among his finest achievements.
"When I travelled through the suburbs around Paris and saw the roads covered with all kinds of rickety old cars, motorbikes, tandems ridden by working couples dressed in matching pullovers [...] I got the sense that I had, in spite of everything, brought a ray of sunshine, a respite, into difficult and dark lives," he told the collaborationists who had by then put him on trial.
"We hadn't just got them out of the pub; we hadn't just made family life easier; we had opened up for them a view of the future, we had created hope."
