The culture

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

 of France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

and of the French people

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 has been shaped by geography

Geography of France

France is a country located primarily in Western Europe, but containing territory in South America, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean, as well as numerous territories of various status. In Europe France borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean...

, by profound historical events

History of France

The history of France goes back to the arrival of the earliest human being in what is now France. Members of the genus Homo entered the area hundreds of thousands years ago, while the first modern Homo sapiens, the Cro-Magnons, arrived around 40,000 years ago...

, and by foreign and internal forces and groups. France, and in particular Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, has played an important role as a center of high culture

High culture

High culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture...

 and of decorative arts since the seventeenth century, first in Europe, and from the nineteenth century on, world wide. From the late nineteenth century, France has also played an important role in cinema

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, fashion

Fashion

Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...

 and cuisine

Cuisine

Cuisine is a characteristic style of cooking practices and traditions, often associated with a specific culture. Cuisines are often named after the geographic areas or regions that they originate from...

. The importance of French culture has waxed and waned over the centuries, depending on its economic, political and military importance. French culture today is marked both by great regional and socioeconomic differences and by strong unifying tendencies.
Problems in defining "French" culture
Wherever you come from, "culture" consists of beliefs and values learned through the socialization process as well as material artifacts. "Culture is the learned set of beliefs, values, norms and material goods shared by group members. Culture consists of everything we learn in groups during the life course-from infancy to old age."

The conception of "French" culture however poses certain difficulties and presupposes a series of assumptions about what precisely the expression "French" means. Whereas American culture

Culture of the United States

The Culture of the United States is a Western culture originally influenced by European cultures. It has been developing since long before the United States became a country with its own unique social and cultural characteristics such as dialect, music, arts, social habits, cuisine, and folklore...

 posits the notion of the "melting-pot" and cultural diversity

Cultural diversity

Cultural diversity is having different cultures respect each other's differences. It could also mean the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in the world as a whole...

, the expression "French culture" tends to refer implicitly to a specific geographical entity (as, say, "metropolitan France

Metropolitan France

Metropolitan France is the part of France located in Europe. It can also be described as mainland France or as the French mainland and the island of Corsica...

", generally excluding its overseas departments) or to a specific historico-sociological group defined by ethnicity, language, religion and geography. The realities of "Frenchness" however, are extremely complicated makenzie. Even before the late nineteenth century, "metropolitan France" was largely a patchwork of local customs and regional differences that the unifying aims of the Ancien Régime

Ancien Régime in France

The Ancien Régime refers primarily to the aristocratic, social and political system established in France from the 15th century to the 18th century under the late Valois and Bourbon dynasties...

 and the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 had only begun to work against, and today's France remains a nation of numerous indigenous and foreign languages, of multiple ethnicities and religions, and of regional diversity that includes French citizens in Corsica

Corsica

Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....

, Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe is an archipelago located in the Leeward Islands, in the Lesser Antilles, with a land area of 1,628 square kilometres and a population of 400,000. It is the first overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. As with the other overseas departments, Guadeloupe...

, Martinique

Martinique

Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...

 and elsewhere around the globe.

The creation of some sort of typical or shared French culture or "cultural identity

Cultural identity

Cultural identity is the identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as far as one is influenced by one's belonging to a group or culture. Cultural identity is similar to and has overlaps with, but is not synonymous with, identity politics....

", despite this vast heterogeneity, is the result of powerful internal forces — such as the French educational system, mandatory military service, state linguistic and cultural policies — and by profound historic events — such as the Franco-Prussian war

Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...

 and the two World War

World war

A world war is a war affecting the majority of the world's most powerful and populous nations. World wars span multiple countries on multiple continents, with battles fought in multiple theaters....

s — which have forged a sense of national identity over the last 200 years. However, despite these unifying forces, France today still remains marked by social class and by important regional differences in culture (cuisine, dialect/accent, local traditions) that many fear will be unable to withstand contemporary social forces (depopulation of the countryside, immigration, centralization, market forces and the world economy).

In recent years, to fight the loss of regional diversity, many in France have promoted forms of multiculturalism

Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...

 and encouraged cultural enclaves (communautarisme), including reforms on the preservation of regional languages and the decentralization of certain government functions, but French multiculturalism has had a harder time of accepting, or of integrating into the collective identity, the large non-Christian and immigrant communities and groups that have come to France since the 1960s.

The last fifty years has also seen French cultural identity "threatened" by global market forces and by American "cultural hegemony

Cultural hegemony

Cultural hegemony is the philosophic and sociological theory, by the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, that a culturally diverse society can be dominated by one social class, by manipulating the societal culture so that its ruling-class worldview is imposed as the societal norm, which then is...

". Since its dealings with the 1993 GATT

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was negotiated during the UN Conference on Trade and Employment and was the outcome of the failure of negotiating governments to create the International Trade Organization . GATT was signed in 1947 and lasted until 1993, when it was replaced by the World...

 free trade

Free trade

Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...

 negotiations, France has fought for what it calls the exception culturelle

Cultural exception

Cultural exception is a concept introduced by France in General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade negotiations in 1993...

, meaning the right to subsidize or treat favorably domestic cultural production and to limit or control foreign cultural products (as seen in public funding for French cinema or the lower VAT

Value added tax

A value added tax or value-added tax is a form of consumption tax. From the perspective of the buyer, it is a tax on the purchase price. From that of the seller, it is a tax only on the "value added" to a product, material or service, from an accounting point of view, by this stage of its...

 accorded to books). The notion of an explicit exception française however has angered many of France's critics.

The French are often perceived as taking a great pride in national identity and the positive achievements of France (the expression "chauvinism

Chauvinism

Chauvinism, in its original and primary meaning, is an exaggerated, bellicose patriotism and a belief in national superiority and glory. It is an eponym of a possibly fictional French soldier Nicolas Chauvin who was credited with many superhuman feats in the Napoleonic wars.By extension it has come...

" is of French origin) and cultural issues are more integrated in the body of the politics than elsewhere (see "The Role of the State", below). The French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 claimed universalism

Universalism

Universalism in its primary meaning refers to religious, theological, and philosophical concepts with universal application or applicability...

 for the democratic principles of the Republic. Charles de Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle

Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....

 actively promoted a notion of French "grandeur" ("greatness"). Perceived declines in cultural status are a matter of national concern and have generated national debates, both from the left (as seen in the anti-globalism of José Bové

José Bové

Joseph Bové is a French farmer and syndicalist, member of the alter-globalization movement, and spokesman for Via Campesina. He was one of the twelve official candidates in the 2007 French presidential election...

) and from the right and far right (as in the discourses of the National Front).

According to Hofstede's Framework for Assessing Culture, the culture of France is moderately individualistic and high Power Distance Index.

Now, the interracial

Multiracial

The terms multiracial and mixed-race describe people whose ancestries come from multiple races. Unlike the term biracial, which often is only used to refer to having parents or grandparents of two different races, the term multiracial may encompass biracial people but can also include people with...

 blending of some native French and newcomers stands as a vibrant and boasted feature of French culture, from popular music to movies and literature. Therefore, alongside mixing of populations, exists also a cultural blending (le métissage culturel) that is present in France. It may be compared to the traditional US conception of the melting-pot. The French culture might have been already blended in from other races and ethnicities, in cases of some biographical research on the possibility of African ancestry on a small number of famous French citizens. Author Alexandre Dumas, père

Alexandre Dumas, père

Alexandre Dumas, , born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world...

 possessed one-fourth black Haitian descent, and Empress Josephine Napoleon who was born and raised in the French West Indies

French West Indies

The term French West Indies or French Antilles refers to the seven territories currently under French sovereignty in the Antilles islands of the Caribbean: the two overseas departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique, the two overseas collectivities of Saint Martin and Saint Barthélemy, plus...

 from a plantation estate family.
We can mention as well, the most famous French singer Edith Piaf

Édith Piaf

Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...

 whose grandmother was a North African from Kabylie

Kabyle people

The Kabyle people are the largest homogeneous Algerian ethno-cultural and linguistical community and the largest nation in North Africa to be considered exclusively Berber. Their traditional homeland is Kabylie in the north of Algeria, one hundred miles east of Algiers...

.

For a long time, the only objection to such outcomes predictably came from the far-right schools of thought. In the past few years, other unexpected voices are however beginning to question what they interpret, as the new philosopher

New Philosophers

The New Philosophers is a term which refers to a generation of French philosophers who broke with Marxism in the early 1970s. They include André Glucksmann, Alain Finkielkraut, Pascal Bruckner, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Jean-Marie Benoist, Christian Jambet, Guy Lardreau and Jean-Paul Dollé...

 Alain Finkielkraut

Alain Finkielkraut

Alain Finkielkraut is a French essayist, and son of a Jewish-Polish manufacturer of fine leather goods who had been deported to Auschwitz and survived. He currently teaches at the École polytechnique as professor of the "history of ideas and modernity" in the department of humanities and social...

 coined the term, as an "Ideology of miscegenation

Miscegenation

Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....

" (une idéologie du métissage) that may come from what one other philosopher, Pascal Bruckner

Pascal Bruckner

Pascal Bruckner is a French writer.-Biography:After studies at the university Paris I and Paris VII Diderot, and then at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Bruckner became maître de conférences at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, and collaborator at the Nouvel Observateur.Bruckner...

, defined as the "Sob of the White man" (le sanglot de l'homme blanc). These critics have been dismissed by the mainstream and their propagators have been labelled as new reactionaries (les nouveaux réactionnaires), even if racist

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

 and anti-immigration sentiment has recently been documented to be increasing in France at least according to one poll.
Language
The Académie française

Académie française

L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

 sets an official standard of language purity; however, this standard, which is not mandatory, is even occasionally ignored by the government itself: for instance, the left-wing government of Lionel Jospin

Lionel Jospin

Lionel Jospin is a French politician, who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002.Jospin was the Socialist Party candidate for President of France in the elections of 1995 and 2002. He was narrowly defeated in the final runoff election by Jacques Chirac in 1995...

 pushed for the feminization of the names of some functions (madame la ministre) while the Académie pushed for some more traditional madame le ministre.

Some action has been taken by the government in order to promote French culture and the French language. For instance, there exists a system of subsidies and preferential loans for supporting French cinema. The Toubon law

Toubon Law

The Toubon Law , is a law of the French government mandating the use of the French language in official government publications, in all advertisements, in all workplaces, in commercial contracts, in some other commercial communication contexts, in all government-financed schools, and some other...

, from the name of the conservative culture minister who promoted it, makes it mandatory to use French in advertisements directed to the general public. Note that contrary to some misconception sometimes found in the Anglophone media, the French government neither regulates the language used by private parties in non-commercial settings, nor makes it compulsory that France-based WWW sites should be in French.

France counts many regional languages, some of them being very different from standard French such as Breton

Breton language

Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...

 and Alsatian

Alsatian language

Alsatian is a Low Alemannic German dialect spoken in most of Alsace, a region in eastern France which has passed between French and German control many times.-Language family:...

. Some regional languages are Roman, like French, such as Occitan. The Basque language is completely unrelated to French and, indeed, to any other language in the world; its area straddles the border between the south west of France and the north of Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

. Many of those languages have enthusiastic advocates; however, the real importance of local languages remains subject to debate. In April 2001, the Minister of Education, Jack Lang

Jack Lang (French politician)

Jack Mathieu Émile Lang is a French politician. A member of the Socialist Party, he served as France's Minister of Culture from 1981 to 1986 and 1988 to 1992, and as Minister of Education from 1992 to 1993 and 2000 to 2002. He was also the Mayor of Blois from 1989 to 2000...

, admitted formally that for more than two centuries, the political powers of the French government had repressed regional languages, and announced that bilingual education

Bilingual education

Bilingual education involves teaching academic content in two languages, in a native and secondary language with varying amounts of each language used in accordance with the program model.-Bilingual education program models:...

 would, for the first time, be recognized, and bilingual teachers recruited in French public schools. English is taught in schools as a second language.

A revision of the French constitution creating official recognition of regional languages was implemented by the Parliament in Congress at Versailles in July 2008.
Religion

France is a secular

Secularism

Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...

 country where freedom of thought and of religion

Freedom of religion

Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...

 is preserved, by virtue of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is a fundamental document of the French Revolution, defining the individual and collective rights of all the estates of the realm as universal. Influenced by the doctrine of "natural right", the rights of man are held to be universal: valid...

. The Republic

French Fifth Republic

The Fifth Republic is the fifth and current republican constitution of France, introduced on 4 October 1958. The Fifth Republic emerged from the collapse of the French Fourth Republic, replacing the prior parliamentary government with a semi-presidential system...

 is based on the principle of laïcité

Laïcité

French secularism, in French, laïcité is a concept denoting the absence of religious involvement in government affairs as well as absence of government involvement in religious affairs. French secularism has a long history but the current regime is based on the 1905 French law on the Separation of...

, that is of freedom of religion (including of agnosticism

Agnosticism

Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....

 and atheism

Atheism

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

) enforced by the Jules Ferry laws

Jules Ferry laws

The Jules Ferry Laws are a set of French Laws which established free education , then mandatory and laic education . Jules Ferry, a lawyer holding the office of Minister of Public Instruction in the 1880s, is widely credited for creating the modern Republican School...

 and the 1905 law on the separation of the State and the Church, enacted at the beginning of the Third Republic

French Third Republic

The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...

 (1871–1940). A January 2007 poll found that 51% of the French population describe themselves as Catholics—and only half of those said they believed in God—, 31% as atheists, 4% as Muslims, 3% as Protestants and 1% as Jews. France guarantees freedom of religion as a constitutional right and the government generally respects this right in practice. A long history of violent conflict between groups led the state to break its ties to the Catholic Church early in the last century and adopt a strong commitment to maintaining a totally secular public sector.

Catholicism

The Roman Catholic faith is no longer considered the state religion

State religion

A state religion is a religious body or creed officially endorsed by the state...

, as it was before the 1789 Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 and throughout the various, non-republican regimes of the 19th century (the Restoration

Bourbon Restoration

The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution , the end of the First Republic , and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon  – when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the...

, the July Monarchy

July Monarchy

The July Monarchy , officially the Kingdom of France , was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848...

 and the Second Empire

Second French Empire

The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...

). The Official split of Catholic Church and State ("Séparation de l'Eglise et de l'Etat") took place in 1905, and this major reform emphazises the Laicist and anti-clericalist mood of French Radical Republicans in this period.

At the beginning of the 20th century, France was a largely rural country with conservative Catholic mores, but in the hundred years since then, the countryside has become depopulated, and the population has largely become more secular. A December 2006 poll by Harris Interactive, published in The Financial Times, found that 32% of the French population described themselves as agnostic, a further 32% as atheist and only 27% believed in any type of God or supreme being.

Islam

After Catholicism, Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

 is the second largest faith in France today, and the country has the largest Muslim population (in percentage) of any Western European country. This is a result of immigration and permanent family settlement in France, from the 1960s on, of groups from, principally, North Africa (Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

, Algeria

Algeria

Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

, Tunisia

Tunisia

Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...

) and, to a lesser extent, other areas such as Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

 and West Africa

West Africa

West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...

. While it is prohibited in France for the government census to collect data on religious beliefs, estimates and polls place the percentage of Muslims at between 4% and 7%. Mainstream French society has had to deal with many difficulties due to this group's inability or unwillingness to integrate into the country's longstanding cultural and societal norms and this has been exemplified in recent years through civil unrest in working-class and immigrant suburbs (see, for example, 2005 civil unrest in France

2005 civil unrest in France

The 2005 civil unrest in France of October and November was a series of riots by mostly Muslim North African youths in Paris and other French cities, involving mainly the burning of cars and public buildings at night starting on 27 October 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois...

) and legal/political issues (such as the "Islamic headscarf affair

French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools

The French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools bans wearing conspicuous religious symbols in French public primary and secondary schools...

").

Judaism

The current Jewish community in France numbers around 600,000, according to the World Jewish Congress

World Jewish Congress

The World Jewish Congress was founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in August 1936 as an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations...

 and 500,000 according to the Appel Unifié Juif de France, and is found mainly in the metropolitan areas of Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, Marseille

Marseille

Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...

 and Strasbourg

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

.

The history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 of the Jews of France dates back over 2,000 years. In the early Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

, France was a center of Jewish learning, but persecution increased as the Middle Ages wore on. France was the first country in Europe to emancipate its Jewish population during the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, but, despite legal equality anti-Semitism remained an issue, as illustrated in the Dreyfus affair

Dreyfus Affair

The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...

 of the late 19th century. However, through the 1870 Décret Crémieux, France secured full citizenship

Citizenship

Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...

 for the Jews in then French-ruled Algeria

Algeria

Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

. Despite the death of a quarter of all French Jews during the Holocaust, France currently has the largest Jewish population

Jewish population

Jewish population refers to the number of Jews in the world. Precise figures are difficult to calculate because the definition of "Who is a Jew" is a source of controversy.-Total population:...

 in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

.

French Jews are mostly Sephardic

Sephardi Jews

Sephardi Jews is a general term referring to the descendants of the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula before their expulsion in the Spanish Inquisition. It can also refer to those who use a Sephardic style of liturgy or would otherwise define themselves in terms of the Jewish customs and...

 and span a range of religious affiliations, from the ultra-Orthodox Haredi communities to the large segment of Jews who are entirely secular.

Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

 is widely reported to be the fourth largest religion in France, after Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. France has over two hundred Buddhist meditation centers, including about twenty sizable retreat centers in rural areas. The Buddhist population mainly consists of Chinese

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 and Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

ese immigrants, with a substantial minority of native French converts and “sympathizers.” The rising popularity of Buddhism in France has been the subject of considerable discussion in the French media and academy in recent years.

Cults and new religious movements

France created in 2006 the first French parliamentary commission on cult activities which led to a report registering a number of cult

Cult

The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...

s considered as dangerous. Supporters of such movements have criticized the report on the grounds of the respect of religious freedom

Status of religious freedom in France

Freedom of religion in France is guaranteed by the constitutional rights set forth in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen....

. Proponents of the measure contend that only dangerous cults have been listed as such, and state secularism ensures religious freedom in France.
Regional customs and traditions
Modern France is the result of centuries of nation building and the acquisition and incorporation of a number of historical provinces

Provinces of France

The Kingdom of France was organised into provinces until March 4, 1790, when the establishment of the département system superseded provinces. The provinces of France were roughly equivalent to the historic counties of England...

 and overseas colonies into its geographical and political structure. These regions all evolved with their own specific cultural and linguistic traditions in fashion, religious observance, regional language and accent, family structure, cuisine, leisure activities, industry, etc.

The evolution of the French state and culture, from the Renaissance to today, has however promoted a centralization

Centralization

Centralisation, or centralization , is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning and decision-making, become concentrated within a particular location and/or group....

 of politics, media, and cultural production in and around Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 (and, to a lesser extent, around the other major urban centers), and the industrialization of the country in the twentieth century has led to a massive move of French people from the countryside to urban areas. At the end of the nineteenth century, around 50% of the French depended on the land for a living; today French farmers only make up 6-7%, while 73% live in cities. Nineteenth century French literature

French literature of the 19th century

19th-century French literature concerns the developments in French literature during a dynamic period in French history that saw the rise of Democracy and the fitful end of Monarchy and Empire...

 abounds in scenes of provincial youth "coming up" to Paris to "make it" in the cultural, political or social scene of the capital (this scheme is frequent in the novels of Balzac). Policies enacted by the French Third Republic

French Third Republic

The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...

 also encouraged this displacement through mandatory military service, a centralized national educational system, and suppression of regional languages. While government policy and public debate in France in recent years has returned to a valorization of regional differences and a call for decentralization of certain aspects of the public sphere (sometimes with ethnic, racial or reactionary overtones), the history of regional displacement and the nature of the modern urban environment and of mass media and culture have made the preservation of a regional "sense of place or culture" in today's France extremely difficult.

The names of the historical French provinces — such as Brittany

Brittany

Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...

 (Bretagne), Berry

Berry (province)

Berry is a region located in the center of France. It was a province of France until the provinces were replaced by départements on 4 March 1790....

, Orléanais

Orléanais

Orléanais is a former province of France, around the cities of Orléans, Chartres, and Blois.The name comes from Orléans, its main city and traditional capital. The province was one of those into which France was divided before the French Revolution...

, Normandy

Normandy

Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...

 (Normandie), Languedoc

Languedoc

Languedoc is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées in the south of France, and whose capital city was Toulouse, now in Midi-Pyrénées. It had an area of approximately 42,700 km² .-Geographical Extent:The traditional...

, Lyonnais

Lyonnais

The Lyonnais is a historical province of France which owes its name to the city of Lyon.The geographical area known as the Lyonnais became part of the Kingdom of Burgundy after the division of the Carolingian Empire...

, Dauphiné

Dauphiné

The Dauphiné or Dauphiné Viennois is a former province in southeastern France, whose area roughly corresponded to that of the present departments of :Isère, :Drôme, and :Hautes-Alpes....

, Champagne

Champagne (province)

The Champagne wine region is a historic province within the Champagne administrative province in the northeast of France. The area is best known for the production of the sparkling white wine that bears the region's name...

, Poitou

Poitou

Poitou was a province of west-central France whose capital city was Poitiers.The region of Poitou was called Thifalia in the sixth century....

, Guyenne

Guyenne

Guyenne or Guienne , , ; Occitan Guiana ) is a vaguely defined historic region of south-western France. The Province of Guyenne, sometimes called the Province of Guyenne and Gascony, was a large province of pre-revolutionary France....

 and Gascony

Gascony

Gascony is an area of southwest France that was part of the "Province of Guyenne and Gascony" prior to the French Revolution. The region is vaguely defined and the distinction between Guyenne and Gascony is unclear; sometimes they are considered to overlap, and sometimes Gascony is considered a...

 (Gascogne), Burgundy (Bourgogne), Picardy

Picardy

This article is about the historical French province. For other uses, see Picardy .Picardy is a historical province of France, in the north of France...

 (Picardie), Provence

Provence

Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...

, Touraine

Touraine

The Touraine is one of the traditional provinces of France. Its capital was Tours. During the political reorganization of French territory in 1790, the Touraine was divided between the departments of Indre-et-Loire, :Loir-et-Cher and Indre.-Geography:...

, Limousin

Limousin (province)

Limousin is one of the traditional provinces of France around the city of Limoges. Limousin lies in the foothills of the western edge of the Massif Central, with cold weather in the winter...

, Auvergne

Auvergne (province)

Auvergne was a historic province in south central France. It was originally the feudal domain of the Counts of Auvergne. It is now the geographical and cultural area that corresponds to the former province....

, Béarn

Béarn

Béarn is one of the traditional provinces of France, located in the Pyrenees mountains and in the plain at their feet, in southwest France. Along with the three Basque provinces of Soule, Lower Navarre, and Labourd, the principality of Bidache, as well as small parts of Gascony, it forms in the...

, Alsace

Alsace

Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...

, Flanders, Lorraine

Lorraine (province)

The Duchy of Upper Lorraine was an historical duchy roughly corresponding with the present-day northeastern Lorraine region of France, including parts of modern Luxembourg and Germany. The main cities were Metz, Verdun, and the historic capital Nancy....

, Corsica

Corsica

Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....

 (Corse), Savoy

Savoy

Savoy is a region of France. It comprises roughly the territory of the Western Alps situated between Lake Geneva in the north and Monaco and the Mediterranean coast in the south....

 (Savoie)... (please see individual articles for specifics about each regional culture) — are still used to designate natural, historical and cultural regions, and many of them appear in modern région or département names. These names are also used by the French in their self-identification of family origin.

Regional identification is most pronounced today in cultures linked to regional languages and non-French-speaking traditions - French language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 itself being only a dialect of Langue d'oïl, the mother language of many of the languages to-be-mentioned, which became a national vehicular language

Lingua franca

A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...

, like (in alphabetical order): Alsatian

Alsatian language

Alsatian is a Low Alemannic German dialect spoken in most of Alsace, a region in eastern France which has passed between French and German control many times.-Language family:...

, Arpitan

Franco-Provençal language

Franco-Provençal , Arpitan, or Romand is a Romance language with several distinct dialects that form a linguistic sub-group separate from Langue d'Oïl and Langue d'Oc. The name Franco-Provençal was given to the language by G.I...

, Basque

Basque Country (historical territory)

The Basque Country is the name given to the home of the Basque people in the western Pyrenees that spans the border between France and Spain on the Atlantic coast....

, Brezhoneg (Breton

Breton language

Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...

), Burgundian

Burgundian language (Oïl)

The Burgundian language, also known by French names Bourguignon-morvandiau, Bourguignon, and Morvandiau, is an Oïl language spoken in Burgundy and particularly in the Morvan area of the region....

, Corsu (Corsican

Corsican language

Corsican is a Italo-Dalmatian Romance language spoken and written on the islands of Corsica and northern Sardinia . Corsican is the traditional native language of the Corsican people, and was long the vernacular language alongside the Italian, official language in Corsica until 1859, which was...

), Català (Catalan

Catalan language

Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...

), Francique

Lorraine Franconian

Lorraine Franconian is a designation, in practice ambiguous, for dialects of West Central German , a group of High German dialects spoken in the Moselle département in the north-eastern French region of Lorraine.The term Lorraine Franconian has multiple denotations...

, Gallo

Gallo language

Gallo is a regional language of France. Gallo is a Romance language, one of the Oïl languages. It is the historic language of the region of Upper Brittany and some neighboring portions of Normandy, but today is spoken by only a small minority of the population, having been largely superseded by...

, Lorrain

Lorrain language

Lorrain is a language spoken by a minority of people in Lorraine in France and in Gaume in Belgium. It is one of the Langues d'oïl. It is classified as a regional language of France, and has the recognised status of a regional language of Wallonia...

, Norman

Norman language

Norman is a Romance language and one of the Oïl languages. Norman can be classified as one of the northern Oïl languages along with Picard and Walloon...

, Occitan, Picard

Picard language

Picard is a language closely related to French, and as such is one of the larger group of Romance languages. It is spoken in two regions in the far north of France – Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardy – and in parts of the Belgian region of Wallonia, the district of Tournai and a part of...

, Poitevin

Poitevin language

Poitevin is a language spoken by the people in Poitou. It is one of the regional languages of France. It is now classified as one of the langues d'oïl but is distinguished by certain features of the langue d'oc...

, Saintongeais

Saintongeais

Saintongeais is a dialect spoken halfway down the western coast of France in the former provinces of Saintonge, Aunis and Angoumois, all of which have been incorporated into the current départements of Charente and Charente-Maritime as well as in parts of their neighbouring départements of...

,etc., and some of these regions have promoted movements calling for some degree of regional autonomy, and, occasionally, national independence (see, for example, Breton nationalism

Breton nationalism

Breton nationalism is the nationalism of the traditional province of Brittany in France. Brittany is considered to be one of the six Celtic nations...

, Corsica

Corsica

Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....

 and Occitania

Occitania

Occitania , also sometimes lo País d'Òc, "the Oc Country"), is the region in southern Europe where Occitan was historically the main language spoken, and where it is sometimes still used, for the most part as a second language...

).

There are huge differences in life style, socioeconomic status and world view between Paris and the provinces. The French often use the expression "la France profonde

France profonde

La France profonde is a phrase that denotes the existence of deep, and profoundly "French" aspects of the culture of French provincial towns, of French village life and rural agricultural culture, which escape the "dominant ideologies" and the hegemony of Paris...

" ("Deep France", similar to "heartland") to designate the profoundly "French" aspects of provincial towns, village life and rural agricultural culture, which escape the hegemony of Paris. The expression can however have a pejorative meaning, similar to the expression "le désert français" ("the French desert") used to describe a lack of acculturation of the provinces. Another expression, "terroir

Terroir

Terroir comes from the word terre "land". It was originally a French term in wine, coffee and tea used to denote the special characteristics that the geography, geology and climate of a certain place bestowed upon particular varieties...

" is a French term originally used for wine and coffee to denote the special characteristics that geography bestowed upon these products. It can be very loosely translated as "a sense of place" which is embodied in certain qualities, and the sum of the effects that the local environment (especially the "soil") has had on the growth of the product. The use of the term has since been generalized to talk about many cultural products.

In addition to its metropolitan territory, France also consists of overseas departments made up of its former colonies

French colonial empire

The French colonial empire was the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire...

 of Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe is an archipelago located in the Leeward Islands, in the Lesser Antilles, with a land area of 1,628 square kilometres and a population of 400,000. It is the first overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. As with the other overseas departments, Guadeloupe...

, Martinique

Martinique

Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...

 and French Guiana

French Guiana

French Guiana is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department located on the northern Atlantic coast of South America. It has borders with two nations, Brazil to the east and south, and Suriname to the west...

 in the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

, and Mayotte

Mayotte

Mayotte is an overseas department and region of France consisting of a main island, Grande-Terre , a smaller island, Petite-Terre , and several islets around these two. The archipelago is located in the northern Mozambique Channel in the Indian Ocean, namely between northwestern Madagascar and...

 and Réunion

Réunion

Réunion is a French island with a population of about 800,000 located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about south west of Mauritius, the nearest island.Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France...

 in the Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...

. (There also exist a number of "overseas collectivities" and "overseas territories". For a full discussion, see administrative divisions of France

Administrative divisions of France

The administrative divisions of France are concerned with the institutional and territorial organization of French territory. There are many administrative divisions, which may have political , electoral , or administrative objectives.- Metropolitan France :As of January 1, 2008, metropolitan...

. Since 1982, following the French government

Government of France

The government of the French Republic is a semi-presidential system determined by the French Constitution of the fifth Republic. The nation declares itself to be an "indivisible, secular, democratic, and social Republic"...

’s policy of decentralisation

Décentralisation

Décentralisation is a french word for both a policy concept in French politics from 1968-1990, and a term employed to describe the results of observations of the evolution of spatial economic and institutional organization of France....

, overseas departments have elected regional councils with powers similar to those of the regions

Régions of France

France is divided into 27 administrative regions , 22 of which are in Metropolitan France, and five of which are overseas. Corsica is a territorial collectivity , but is considered a region in mainstream usage, and is even shown as such on the INSEE website...

 of metropolitan France. As a result of a constitutional revision which occurred in 2003, these regions are now to be called overseas regions.) These overseas departments have the same political status as metropolitan departments and are integral parts of France, (similar to the way in which Hawaii

Hawaii

Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

 is a state and an integral part of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

), yet they also have specific cultural and linguistic traditions which set them apart. Certain elements of overseas culture have also been introduced to metropolitan culture (as, for example, the musical form the biguine

Biguine

Biguine is a style of music that originated in Guadeloupe and Martinique in the 19th century.-History:Two main types of French antillean biguine can be identified based on the instrumentation in contemporary musical practice, which is call the drum biguine and the orchestrated biguine . Each of...

).

Industrialization, immigration and urbanization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have also created new socioeconomic regional communities in France, both urban (like Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, Lyon

Lyon

Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

, Villeurbanne

Villeurbanne

Villeurbanne is a commune in the Rhône department in eastern France.It is situated northeast of Lyon, with which it forms the heart of the second-largest metropolitan area in France after that of Paris. Villeurbanne is the second-largest city in the department.-History:The current location of...

, Lille

Lille

Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...

, Marseille

Marseille

Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...

, etc.) and the suburban and working class hinterlands (like Seine-Saint-Denis

Seine-Saint-Denis

- Culture :A number of hip hop artists come from the Seine-Saint-Denis, including one of the first major hip-hop groups in France, NTM, as well as Lord Kossity, or more recent acts such as Tandem or Sefyu.- Miscellaneous topics :...

) of urban agglomerations (called variously banlieue

Banlieue

In francophone areas, banlieues are the "outskirts" of a city: the zone around a city that is under the city's rule.Banlieues are translated as "suburbs", as these are also residential areas on the outer edge of a city, but the connotations of the term "banlieue" in France can be different from...

s ("suburb

Suburb

The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...

s", sometimes qualified as "chic" or "pauvres") or les cités ("housing projects") which have developed their own "sense of place" and local culture (much like the various boroughs

Borough (New York City)

New York City, one of the largest cities in the world, is composed of five boroughs. Each borough now has the same boundaries as the county it is in. County governments were dissolved when the city consolidated in 1898, along with all city, town, and village governments within each county...

 of New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 or suburbs of Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

), as well as cultural identity.
Other specific communities
Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 has traditionally been associated with alternative, artistic or intellectual subcultures, many of which involved foreigners. Such subcultures include the "Bohemians

Bohemianism

Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...

" of the mid-nineteenth century, the Impressionists

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

, artistic circles of the Belle époque

Belle Époque

The Belle Époque or La Belle Époque was a period in European social history that began during the late 19th century and lasted until World War I. Occurring during the era of the French Third Republic and the German Empire, it was a period characterised by optimism and new technological and medical...

 (around such artists as Picasso and Alfred Jarry

Alfred Jarry

Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....

), the Dada

Dada

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

ists, Surrealists

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, the "Lost Generation

Lost Generation

The "Lost Generation" is a term used to refer to the generation, actually a cohort, that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to...

" (Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

, Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...

) and the post-war "intellectuals" associated with Montparnasse

Montparnasse

Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...

 (Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...

, Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir

Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...

).

France has an estimated 280,000-340,000 Roma, generally known as Gitans, Tsiganes, Romanichels (slightly pejorative), Bohémiens, or Gens du voyage ("travellers").

There are gay and lesbian communities in the cities, particularly in the Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 metropolitan area (such as in Le Marais

Le Marais

Le Marais is a historic district in Paris, France. Long the aristocratic district of Paris, it hosts many outstanding buildings of historic and architectural importance...

 district of the capital). Although homosexuality is perhaps not as well tolerated in France as in Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, Scandinavia

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

, and the Benelux

Benelux

The Benelux is an economic union in Western Europe comprising three neighbouring countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. These countries are located in northwestern Europe between France and Germany...

 nations, surveys of the French public reveal a considerable shift in attitudes comparable to other Western European nations. As of 2001, 55% of the French consider homosexuality "an acceptable lifestyle." The current mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë

Bertrand Delanoë

Bertrand Delanoë is a French politician, and has been the mayor of Paris since 2001. He is member of the Socialist Party . Delanoë was born in Tunis, Tunisia to a French-Tunisian father and a French mother...

, is gay.
In 2006, an Ipsos survey shows that 62% support same-sex marriage, while 37% were opposed. 55% believed gay and lesbian couples should not have parenting rights, while 44% believe same-sex couples should be able to adopt.
See also LGBT rights in France.
Social class

Despite the egalitarian aspects of French society, French culture remains marked by social-economic class and by many class distinctions.

Household structure

Growing out of the values of the Catholic Church and rural communities, the basic unit of French society was traditionally held to be the family. Over the twentieth century, the "traditional" family structure in France has evolved from extended families to, after World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, nuclear families

Nuclear family

Nuclear family is a term used to define a family group consisting of a father and mother and their children. This is in contrast to the smaller single-parent family, and to the larger extended family. Nuclear families typically center on a married couple, but not always; the nuclear family may have...

. Since the 1960s, marriages have decreased and divorces have increased in France, and divorce law and legal family status have evolved to reflect these social changes.

According to INSEE

INSEE

INSEE is the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies. It collects and publishes information on the French economy and society, carrying out the periodic national census. Located in Paris, it is the French branch of Eurostat, European Statistical System...

 figures, household and family composition in metropolitan France

Metropolitan France

Metropolitan France is the part of France located in Europe. It can also be described as mainland France or as the French mainland and the island of Corsica...

 continues to evolve. Most significantly, from 1982 to 1999, single parent families have increased from 3.6% to 7.4%; there have also been increases in the number of unmarried couples, childless couples, and single men (from 8.5% to 12.5) and women (from 16.0% to 18.5%). Their analysis indicates that "one in three dwellings are occupied by a person living alone; one in four dwellings are occupied by a childless couple.."

Voted by the French Parliament in November 1999 following some controversy, the pacte civil de solidarité

Pacte civil de solidarité

In France, a pacte civil de solidarité commonly known as a PACS /paks/ , is a form of civil union between two adults for organising their joint life. It brings rights and responsibilities, but less so than marriage...

("civil pact of solidarity") commonly known as a PACS, is a form of civil union

Civil union

A civil union, also referred to as a civil partnership, is a legally recognized form of partnership similar to marriage. Beginning with Denmark in 1989, civil unions under one name or another have been established by law in many developed countries in order to provide same-sex couples rights,...

 between two adults (same-sex or opposite-sex) for organizing their joint life. It brings rights and responsibilities, but less so than marriage

Marriage

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

. From a legal standpoint, a PACS is a "contract" drawn up between the two individuals, which is stamped and registered by the clerk of the court. Individuals who have registered a PACS are still considered "single" with regard to family status for some purposes, while they are increasingly considered in the same way as married couples are for other purposes. While it was pushed by the government of Prime Minister

Prime Minister of France

The Prime Minister of France in the Fifth Republic is the head of government and of the Council of Ministers of France. The head of state is the President of the French Republic...

 Lionel Jospin

Lionel Jospin

Lionel Jospin is a French politician, who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002.Jospin was the Socialist Party candidate for President of France in the elections of 1995 and 2002. He was narrowly defeated in the final runoff election by Jacques Chirac in 1995...

 in 1998, it was also opposed, mostly by people on the right-wing who support traditionalist family values

Family values

Family values are political and social beliefs that hold the nuclear family to be the essential ethical and moral unit of society. Familialism is the ideology that promotes the family and its values as an institution....

 and who argued that PACS and the recognition of homosexual unions would be disastrous for French society.

However, same-sex marriage

Same-sex marriage in France

Same-sex marriage cannot legally be performed in France, though some foreign same-sex marriages are recognized and the PACS, which confers some of the same rights and responsibilities as marriage, is available to same-sex couples....

 is not legally recognized in France.
Role of the State
The French state has traditionally played a key role in promoting and supporting culture through the educational, linguistic, cultural and economic policies of the government and through its promotion of national identity. Because of the closeness of this relationship, cultural changes in France are often linked to, or produce, political crisis.

The relationship between the French state and culture is an old one. Under Louis XIII

Louis XIII of France

Louis XIII was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1610 to 1643.Louis was only eight years old when he succeeded his father. His mother, Marie de Medici, acted as regent during Louis' minority...

's minister Richelieu, the independent Académie française

Académie française

L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

 came under state supervision and became an official organ of control over the French language and seventeenth-century literature. During Louis XIV

Louis XIV of France

Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...

's reign, his minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert

Jean-Baptiste Colbert

Jean-Baptiste Colbert was a French politician who served as the Minister of Finances of France from 1665 to 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV. His relentless hard work and thrift made him an esteemed minister. He achieved a reputation for his work of improving the state of French manufacturing...

 brought French luxury industries, like textile and porcelain, under royal control and the architecture, furniture, fashion and etiquette of the royal court (particularly at the Château de Versailles) became the preeminent model of noble culture in France (and, to a great degree, throughout Europe) during the latter half of the seventeenth century.

At times, French state policies have sought to unify the country around certain cultural norms, while at other times they have promoted regional differences within a heterogeneous French identity. The unifying effect was particularly true of the "radical period"" of the French Third Republic

French Third Republic

The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...

 which fought regionalisms (including regional languages), supported anti-clericalism and a strict separation of church from state (including education) and actively promoted national identity, thus converting (as the historian Eugen Weber

Eugen Weber

Eugen Joseph Weber was a Romanian-born American historian with a special focus on Western Civilization and the Western Tradition....

 has put it) a "country of peasants into a nation of Frenchmen". The Vichy Regime, on the other hand, promoted regional "folk" traditions.

The cultural policies of the (current) French Fifth Republic

French Fifth Republic

The Fifth Republic is the fifth and current republican constitution of France, introduced on 4 October 1958. The Fifth Republic emerged from the collapse of the French Fourth Republic, replacing the prior parliamentary government with a semi-presidential system...

 have been varied, but a consensus seems to exist around the need for preservation of French regionalisms (such as food and language) as long as these don't undermine national identity. Meanwhile, the French state remains ambivalent over the integration into "French" culture of cultural traditions from recent immigrant groups and from foreign cultures, particularly American culture (movies, music, fashion, fast food, language, etc.). There also exists a certain fear over the perceived loss of French identity and culture in the European system and under American "cultural hegemony".

Education

The French educational system is highly centralised, organised, and ramified. It is divided into three different stages:

• primary education (enseignement primaire); secondary education (collège and lycée
  Secondary education in France
  In France, secondary education is in two stages:* collèges cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 14...
  
  ); and higher education (l'université)(or les Grandes écoles).

Primary and secondary education is predominantly public (private schools also exist, in particular a strong nationwide network of primary and secondary Catholic education), while higher education has both public and private elements. At the end of secondary education, students take the baccalauréat

Baccalauréat

The baccalauréat , often known in France colloquially as le bac, is an academic qualification which French and international students take at the end of the lycée . It was introduced by Napoleon I in 1808. It is the main diploma required to pursue university studies...

 exam, which allows them to pursue higher education. The baccalauréat pass rate in 1999 was 78.3%.

In 1999–2000, educational spending amounted to 7% of the French GDP and 37% of the national budget.

Since the Jules Ferry laws

Jules Ferry laws

The Jules Ferry Laws are a set of French Laws which established free education , then mandatory and laic education . Jules Ferry, a lawyer holding the office of Minister of Public Instruction in the 1880s, is widely credited for creating the modern Republican School...

 of 1881-2, named after the then Minister of Public Instruction, all state-funded schools, including universities, are independent from the (Roman Catholic) Church. Education in these institutions is free. Non-secular institutions are allowed to organize education as well. The French educational system differs strongly from Northern-European and American systems in that it stresses the importance of partaking in a society as opposed to being responsibly independent.

Secular educational policy has become critical in recent issues of French multiculturalism, as in the "affair of the Islamic headscarf

French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools

The French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools bans wearing conspicuous religious symbols in French public primary and secondary schools...

".

Minister of Culture

The Minister of Culture is, in the Government of France

Government of France

The government of the French Republic is a semi-presidential system determined by the French Constitution of the fifth Republic. The nation declares itself to be an "indivisible, secular, democratic, and social Republic"...

, the cabinet member

French government ministers

The Cabinet of France is a body of top administration members of the Prime Minister's Cabinet. In French, the word gouvernement generally refers to the "Administration", but in a narrower sense to the Cabinet.The Council is responsible to the French National Assembly...

 in charge of national museums and monuments; promoting and protecting the arts (visual, plastic, theatrical, musical, dance, architectural, literary, televisual and cinematographic) in France and abroad; and managing the national archives and regional "maisons de culture" (culture centres). The Ministry of Culture is located on the Palais Royal

Palais Royal

The Palais-Royal, originally called the Palais-Cardinal, is a palace and an associated garden located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris...

 in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

.

The modern post of Minister of Culture was created by Charles de Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle

Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....

 in 1959 and the first Minister was the writer André Malraux

André Malraux

André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...

. Malraux was responsible for realizing the goals of the "droit à la culture" ("the right to culture") -- an idea which had been incorporated in the French constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...

 (1948) -- by democratizing access to culture, while also achieving the Gaullist

Gaullism

Gaullism is a French political ideology based on the thought and action of Resistance leader then president Charles de Gaulle.-Foreign policy:...

 aim of elevating the "grandeur" ("greatness") of post-war France. To this end, he created numerous regional cultural centres throughout France and actively sponsored the arts. Malraux's artistic tastes included the modern arts and the avant-garde, but on the whole he remained conservative.

The Ministry of Jacques Toubon

Jacques Toubon

Jacques Toubon is a right-wing French politician who held several major national and Parisian offices.-Political career:Governmental functionsMinister of Culture : 1993–1995....

 was notable for a number of laws (the "Toubon Law

Toubon Law

The Toubon Law , is a law of the French government mandating the use of the French language in official government publications, in all advertisements, in all workplaces, in commercial contracts, in some other commercial communication contexts, in all government-financed schools, and some other...

s") enacted for the preservation of the French language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, both in advertisements (all ads must include a French translation of foreign words) and on the radio (40% of songs on French radio stations must be in French), ostensibly in reaction to the presence of English.

Académie française

The Académie française, or the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII

Louis XIII of France

Louis XIII was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1610 to 1643.Louis was only eight years old when he succeeded his father. His mother, Marie de Medici, acted as regent during Louis' minority...

. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, it was restored in 1803 by Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon I of France

Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...

 (the Académie considers itself having been suspended, not suppressed, during the revolution). It is the oldest of the five académies of the Institut de France

Institut de France

The Institut de France is a French learned society, grouping five académies, the most famous of which is the Académie française.The institute, located in Paris, manages approximately 1,000 foundations, as well as museums and chateaux open for visit. It also awards prizes and subsidies, which...

.

The Académie consists of forty members, known as immortels (immortals). New members are elected by the members of the Académie itself. Académicians hold office for life, but they may be removed for misconduct. The body has the task of acting as an official authority on the language; it is charged with publishing an official dictionary of the language. Its rulings, however, are only advisory; not binding on either the public or the government.

Military service

Until 1996, France had compulsory military service

Military service

Military service, in its simplest sense, is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, whether as a chosen job or as a result of an involuntary draft . Some nations require a specific amount of military service from every citizen...

 of young men. This has been credited by historians for further promoting a unified national identity and by breaking down regional isolationism.

Labor and employment policy

In France the first labour laws were Waldeck Rousseau's laws passed in 1884. Between 1936 and 1938 the Popular Front

Popular Front (France)

The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...

 enacted a law mandating 12 days (2 weeks) each year of paid vacation

Annual leave

Annual leave is paid time off work granted by employers to employees to be used for whatever the employee wishes. Depending on the employer's policies, differing number of days may be offered, and the employee may be required to give a certain amount of advance notice, may have to coordinate with...

 for workers, and a law

Matignon Accords (1936)

The Matignon Agreements were signed on June 7, 1936, at one o'clock in the morning, between the CGPF employers trade union confederation, the CGT trade union and the French state...

 limiting the work week to 40 hours, excluding overtime. The Grenelle accords negotiated on May 25 and 26th in the middle of the May 1968 crisis, reduced the working week to 44 hours and created trade union sections in each enterprise. The minimum wage was also increased by 25%. In 2000 Lionel Jospin

Lionel Jospin

Lionel Jospin is a French politician, who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002.Jospin was the Socialist Party candidate for President of France in the elections of 1995 and 2002. He was narrowly defeated in the final runoff election by Jacques Chirac in 1995...

's government then enacted the 35-hour workweek

35-hour workweek

The 35-hour working week is a measure adopted first in France, in February 2000, under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's Plural Left government; it was pushed by Minister of Labour Martine Aubry. The previous legal duration of the working week was 39 hours, which had been established by François...

, down from 39 hours. Five years later, conservative prime minister Dominique de Villepin

Dominique de Villepin

Dominique Marie François René Galouzeau de Villepin is a French politician who served as the Prime Minister of France from 31 May 2005 to 17 May 2007....

 enacted the New Employment Contract (CNE). Addressing the demands of employers asking for more flexibility in French labour laws, the CNE sparked criticism from trade unions and opponents claiming it was lending favour to contingent work

Contingent work

Contingent work, also sometimes known as casual work, is a neologism which describes a type of employment relationship between an employer and employee...

. In 2006 he then attempted to pass the First Employment Contract

First Employment Contract

The contrat première embauche was a new form of employment contract pushed in spring 2006 in France by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin...

 (CPE) through a vote by emergency procedure, but that it was met by students and unions' protests. President Jacques Chirac

Jacques Chirac

Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...

 finally had no choice but to repeal it.

Healthcare and social welfare

The French are profoundly committed to the public healthcare system (called "sécurité sociale") and to their "pay-as-you-go" social welfare system.

In 1998, 75% of health payments in France were paid through the public healthcare system. Since 27 July 1999, France has a universal medical coverage for permanent residents in France (stable residence for more than three months). Using five performance indicators to measure health systems in 191 member states, it finds that France provides the best overall health care followed among major countries by Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria and Japan (The World Health Report).

Food and alcohol

Traditional French culture places a high priority on the enjoyment of food. French cuisine was codified in the 20th century by Georges Auguste Escoffier

Auguste Escoffier

Georges Auguste Escoffier was a French chef, restaurateur and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods. He is a legendary figure among chefs and gourmands, and was one of the most important leaders in the development of modern French cuisine...

 to become the modern version of haute cuisine

Haute cuisine

Haute cuisine or grande cuisine was characterised by French cuisine in elaborate preparations and presentations served in small and numerous courses that were produced by large and hierarchical staffs at the grand restaurants and hotels of Europe.The 17th century chef and writer La Varenne...

. Escoffier's major work, however, left out much of the regional character to be found in the provinces of France. Gastro-tourism and the Guide Michelin helped to bring people to the countryside during the 20th century and beyond, to sample this rich bourgeois and peasant

Peasant

A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...

 cuisine of France. Basque cuisine

Basque cuisine

Basque cuisine, the cuisine of the Basque people, includes meats and fish grilled over hot coals, marmitako and lamb stews, cod, Tolosa bean dishes, paprikas from Lekeitio, pintxos , Idiazabal sheep's cheese, txakoli sparkling wine, and Basque cider.A basquaise is a type of dish prepared in the...

 has also been a great influence over the cuisine in the southwest of France.

Ingredients and dishes vary by region (see regional cuisine). There are many significant regional dishes that have become both national and regional. Many dishes that were once regional, however, have proliferated in different variations across the country in the present day. Cheese

Cheese

Cheese is a generic term for a diverse group of milk-based food products. Cheese is produced throughout the world in wide-ranging flavors, textures, and forms....

 (see list of French cheeses) and wine

Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

 (see French wine

French wine

French wine is produced in several regions throughout France, in quantities between 50 and 60 million hectolitres per year, or 7–8 billion bottles. France has the world's second-largest total vineyard area, behind Spain, and is in the position of being the world's largest wine producer...

) are also a major part of the cuisine, playing different roles both regionally and nationally with their many variations and Appellation d'origine contrôlée

Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée

Appellation d’origine contrôlée , which translates as "controlled designation of origin", is the French certification granted to certain French geographical indications for wines, cheeses, butters, and other agricultural products, all under the auspices of the government bureau Institut National...

(AOC) (regulated appellation) laws (lentil

Lentil

The lentil is an edible pulse. It is a bushy annual plant of the legume family, grown for its lens-shaped seeds...

s from Le Puy-en-Velay

Le Puy-en-Velay

Le Puy-en-Velay is a commune in the Haute-Loire department in south-central France.Its inhabitants are called Ponots.-History:Le Puy-en-Velay was a major bishopric in medieval France, founded early, though its early history is legendary...

 also have an AOC status). Another French product of special note is the Charolais cattle

Charolais cattle

Charolais cattle are a beef breed of cattle which originated in Charolais, around Charolles, in France. They are raised for their meat and are known for their composite qualities when crossed with other breeds, most notably Angus and Hereford cattle...

.

The French typically eat only a simple breakfast ("petit déjeuner") (of, say, coffee or tea, served traditionally in a large handleless "bol" (bowl) and bread, breakfast pastries (croissant

Croissant

A croissant is a buttery flaky pastry named for its distinctive crescent shape. It is also sometimes called a crescent, from the French word for "crescent". Croissants are made of a leavened variant of puff pastry...

s)). Lunch ("déjeuner") and dinner ("dîner") are the main meals of the day. Formal four course meals consist of a starter course ("entrée"), a salad, a main course ("plat principal"), and finally a cheese and/or a dessert course. While French cuisine is often associated with rich desserts, in most homes dessert consists of only a fruit or yogurt.

Food shopping in France was formerly done almost daily in small local shops and markets, but the arrival of the supermarket

Supermarket

A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...

 and the even larger "hypermarchés" (large-surface distributors) in France have disrupted this tradition. With depopulation of the countryside, many towns have been forced to close shops and markets.

Rates of obesity and heart disease in France have traditionally been lower than in other north-western European countries. This is sometimes called the "French paradox

French paradox

The French Paradox is the observation that French people suffer a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease, despite having a diet relatively rich in saturated fats...

" (see, for example, Mireille Guiliano's 2006 book French Women Don't Get Fat). French cuisine and eating habits have however come under great pressure in recent years from modern "fast food

Fast food

Fast food is the term given to food that can be prepared and served very quickly. While any meal with low preparation time can be considered to be fast food, typically the term refers to food sold in a restaurant or store with preheated or precooked ingredients, and served to the customer in a...

", American products and the new global agricultural industry. While French youth culture has gravitated toward fast food and American eating habits (with an attendant rise in obesity), the French in general have remained committed to preserving certain elements of their food culture through such activities as including programs of "taste acquisition" in their public schools, by the use of the "appellation d'origine contrôlée

Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée

Appellation d’origine contrôlée , which translates as "controlled designation of origin", is the French certification granted to certain French geographical indications for wines, cheeses, butters, and other agricultural products, all under the auspices of the government bureau Institut National...

" laws, and by state and European subsides to the French agricultural industry. Emblematic of these tensions is the work of José Bové

José Bové

Joseph Bové is a French farmer and syndicalist, member of the alter-globalization movement, and spokesman for Via Campesina. He was one of the twelve official candidates in the 2007 French presidential election...

, who founded, in 1987, the Confédération Paysanne, an agricultural union that places its highest political values on humans and the environment, promotes organic farming

Organic farming

Organic farming is the form of agriculture that relies on techniques such as crop rotation, green manure, compost and biological pest control to maintain soil productivity and control pests on a farm...

 and opposes genetically modified organisms; Bové's most famous protest was the dismantling of a McDonald's

McDonald's

McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...

 franchise in Millau

Millau

Millau is a commune in the Aveyron department in southern France. It is located at the confluence of the Tarn and Dourbie rivers.-History:...

 (Aveyron

Aveyron

Aveyron is a département in southern France named after the Aveyron River.- History :Aveyron is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790....

), in 1999.

In France, cutlery is used in the continental manner (with the fork in the left hand, prongs facing down and the knife in the right hand). French etiquette prohibits the placing of hands below the table and the placing of elbows on it.

The legal drinking age is officially 18 (see Legal drinking age

Legal drinking age

Laws about the legal drinking age cover a wide range of issues and behaviours, addressing when and where alcohol can be consumed. The minimum age alcohol can be legally consumed can be different to the age when it can be purchased. These laws vary among different countries and many laws have...

).

France is one of the oldest wine

Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

-producing regions of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. France now produces the most wine by value in the world (although Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 rivals it by volume and Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 has more land under cultivation for wine grapes). Bordeaux wine

Bordeaux wine

A Bordeaux wine is any wine produced in the Bordeaux region of France. Average vintages produce over 700 million bottles of Bordeaux wine, ranging from large quantities of everyday table wine, to some of the most expensive and prestigious wines in the world...

, Bourgogne wine and Champagne are important agricultural products.

Tobacco and drugs

The cigarette

Cigarette

A cigarette is a small roll of finely cut tobacco leaves wrapped in a cylinder of thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end and allowed to smoulder; its smoke is inhaled from the other end, which is held in or to the mouth and in some cases a cigarette holder may be used as well...

 smoking age is 18 years. According to a widespread cliché, smoking has been part of French culture — actually figures indicate that in terms of consumption per capita, France is only the 60th country out of 121.

France, from 1 February 2007, tightened the existing ban on smoking in public places found in the 1991 Évin law: Law n°91-32 of 10 January, 1991, containing a variety of measures against alcoholism

Alcoholism

Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...

 and tobacco consumption.

Smoking is now banned in all public places (stations, museums, etc.); an exception exists for special smoking rooms fulfilling drastic conditions, see below. A special exemption was made for cafés and restaurants, clubs, casinos, bars, etc. which ended, 1 January 2008. Opinion polls suggest 70% of people support the ban. Previously, under the former implementation rules of the 1991 Évin law, restaurants, cafés etc. just had to provide smoking and non-smoking sections, which in practice were often not well separated.

Under the new regulations, smoking rooms are allowed, but are subjected to very strict conditions: they may occupy at most 20% of the total floor space of the establishment and their size may not be more than 35 m²; they need to be equipped with separate ventilation which replaces the full volume of air ten times per hour; the air pressure of the smoking room must constantly be lower than the pressure in the contiguous rooms; they have doors that close automatically; no service can be provided in the smoking rooms; cleaning and maintenance personnel may enter the room only one hour after it was last used for smoking.

Popular French cigarette brands include Gauloises

Gauloises

Gauloises is a brand of cigarette of French manufacture. It is produced by the company Imperial Tobacco following their acquisition of Altadis in January 2008.- Cigarette :...

 and Gitanes

Gitanes

Gitanes is a brand of French cigarettes, sold in many varieties of strengths and packages. It is currently owned by Imperial Tobacco following their acquisition of Altadis in January 2008, having been owned by SEITA before that. Originally rolled with darker or brun tobacco, in contrast to...

.

The possession, sale and use of cannabis

Cannabis

Cannabis is a genus of flowering plants that includes three putative species, Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. These three taxa are indigenous to Central Asia, and South Asia. Cannabis has long been used for fibre , for seed and seed oils, for medicinal purposes, and as a...

 (predominantly Moroccan

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

 hashish

Hashish

Hashish is a cannabis preparation composed of compressed stalked resin glands, called trichomes, collected from the unfertilized buds of the cannabis plant. It contains the same active ingredients but in higher concentrations than unsifted buds or leaves...

) is illegal in France. Since 1 March 1994, the penalties for cannabis use are from two months to a year and/or a fine, while possession, cultivation or trafficking of the drug can be punished much more severely, up to ten years. According to a 1992 survey by SOFRES, 4.7 million French people ages 12–44 have smoked cannabis at least once in their lives.

Sports and hobbies

The French "national" sport is Association football, colloquially called 'le foot' (see Football in France

Football in France

Football is the most popular sport in France. The Fédération Française de Football is the national governing bodyand is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the game of association football in the country, both professional and amateur...

). The most-watched sports in France are football (soccer)

Football (soccer)

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...

, rugby union

Rugby union

Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

, cycling

Cycling

Cycling, also called bicycling or biking, is the use of bicycles for transport, recreation, or for sport. Persons engaged in cycling are cyclists or bicyclists...

, tennis

Tennis

Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

, handball

Team handball

Handball is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each pass a ball to throw it into the goal of the other team...

, basketball

Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

 and sailing

Sailing

Sailing is the propulsion of a vehicle and the control of its movement with large foils called sails. By changing the rigging, rudder, and sometimes the keel or centre board, a sailor manages the force of the wind on the sails in order to move the boat relative to its surrounding medium and...

. France is notable for holding (and winning) the football World Cup

1998 FIFA World Cup

The 1998 FIFA World Cup, the 16th FIFA World Cup, was held in France from 10 June to 12 July 1998. France was chosen as host nation by FIFA on 2 July 1992. The tournament was won by France, who beat Brazil 3-0 in the final...

 in 1998, for holding the annual cycling race Tour de France

Tour de France

The Tour de France is an annual bicycle race held in France and nearby countries. First staged in 1903, the race covers more than and lasts three weeks. As the best known and most prestigious of cycling's three "Grand Tours", the Tour de France attracts riders and teams from around the world. The...

, and the tennis Grand Slam tournament Roland Garros, or the French Open. Sport is encouraged in school, and local sports clubs receive financial support from the local governments. While football (soccer) is definitely the most popular, rugby union

Rugby union

Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

 and rugby league

Rugby league

Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...

 takes dominance in the southwest, especially around the city of Toulouse

Toulouse

Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...

 (see Rugby union in France

Rugby union in France

Rugby union is the second most popular team sport in France, after association football, and is the dominant sport in most of the southern half of the country. It was first introduced in the early 1870s by British residents. Elite French clubs participate in the professional domestic club league,...

 and Rugby league in France

Rugby league in France

Rugby league has been played in France since 1934. As with rugby union, the heartland of the game is the south of the country.During the Second World War, in association with the French rugby union, the sport was banned by the Vichy government, an act which the sport has struggled to recover from...

)

The modern Olympics was invented in France, in 1894 by Pierre de Coubertin

Pierre de Coubertin

Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin was a French educationalist and historian, founder of the International Olympic Committee, and is considered the father of the modern Olympic Games...

.

Professional sailing in France is centred on singlehanded/shorthanded ocean racing with the pinnacle of this branch of the sport being the Vendee Globe

Vendée Globe

The Vendée Globe is a round-the-world single-handed yacht race, sailed non-stop and without assistance. The race was founded by Philippe Jeantot in 1989, and since 1992 has taken place every four years....

 singlehanded around the world race which starts every 4 years from the French Atlantic coast. Other significant events include the Solitaire du Figaro, Mini Transat 6.50

Mini Transat 6.50

Mini Transat 6.50 also known as Transat 650 is a solo transatlantic yacht race that starts in France and ends in Brasil covering over 4000 miles with a stop in the Madeira or the Canary Islands. The yachts are very small with respect to the race, and are sanctioned by the organization...

, Tour de France a Voile and Route du Rhum transatlantic race. France has been a regular competitor in the America's Cup

America's Cup

The America’s Cup is a trophy awarded to the winner of the America's Cup match races between two yachts. One yacht, known as the defender, represents the yacht club that currently holds the America's Cup and the second yacht, known as the challenger, represents the yacht club that is challenging...

 since the 1970s.

Other important sports include:

• 24 Hours of Le Mans
  24 Hours of Le Mans
  The 24 Hours of Le Mans is the world's oldest sports car race in endurance racing, held annually since near the town of Le Mans, France. Commonly known as the Grand Prix of Endurance and Efficiency, race teams have to balance speed against the cars' ability to run for 24 hours without sustaining...
  
   - The world's oldest sports car race
• skiing
  Skiing
  Skiing is a recreational activity using skis as equipment for traveling over snow. Skis are used in conjunction with boots that connect to the ski with use of a binding....
  
   - France has an extensive number of ski resorts in the French alps such as tignes
  Tignes
  Tignes is a commune in the Tarentaise Valley, Savoie department in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France.It is also a ski resort near Val d'Isère, that are linked together as the "Espace Killy" region...
  
  . Ski resorts are also located in the Pyrénées and Vosges mountain chains.
• Pétanque
  Pétanque
  Pétanque is a form of boules where the goal is, while standing inside a starting circle with both feet on the ground, to throw hollow metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball called a cochonnet or jack. It is also sometimes called a bouchon or le petit...
  
   - the international federation is recognized by the IOC. http://www.cmsboules.com/.
• Fencing
  Fencing
  Fencing, which is also known as modern fencing to distinguish it from historical fencing, is a family of combat sports using bladed weapons.Fencing is one of four sports which have been featured at every one of the modern Olympic Games...
  
   - fencing leads the list of sports for which gold medals were won for France at the summer Olympics (see France at the Olympics).
• Parkour
  Parkour
  Parkour is a method of movement focused on moving around obstacles with speed and efficiency. Originally developed in France, the main purpose of the discipline is to teach participants how to move through their environment by vaulting, rolling, running, climbing and jumping...
  
   - developed in France, parkour ("art du déplacement") is a physical activity that resembles self-defense
  Self-defense
  Self-defense, self-defence or private defense is a countermeasure that involves defending oneself, one's property or the well-being of another from physical harm. The use of the right of self-defense as a legal justification for the use of force in times of danger is available in many...
  
   or martial arts
  Martial arts
  Martial arts are extensive systems of codified practices and traditions of combat, practiced for a variety of reasons, including self-defense, competition, physical health and fitness, as well as mental and spiritual development....
  
  .
• Babyfoot (table football) - a very popular pastime in bars and in homes in France, and the French are the predominant winners of worldwide table football competitions.
• Kitesurfing
  Kitesurfing
  Kitesurfing or Kiteboarding is an adventure surface water sport that has been described as combining wakeboarding, windsurfing, surfing, paragliding, and gymnastics into one extreme sport. Kitesurfing harnesses the power of the wind to propel a rider across the water on a small surfboard or a...
  
  

Like other cultural areas in France, sport is overseen by a government ministry, the Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports (France)

Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports (France)

The Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports is, in the Government of France, the cabinet member in charge of national and public sport associations, youth affairs, public sports centers and national stadia...

 which is in charge of national and public sport associations, youth affairs, public sports centers and national stadia (like the Stade de France

Stade de France

The Stade de France is the national stadium of France, situated just north of Paris in the commune of Saint-Denis. It has an all-seater capacity of 80,000, making it the fifth largest stadium in Europe, and is used by both the France national football team and French rugby union team for...

).

Fashion

Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 is the leading capital of fashion and design. Along with Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, Paris is center of a important number of fashion shows. Some of the world's biggest fashion houses (ex:Chanel

Chanel

Chanel S.A. is a French fashion house founded by the couturier Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, well established in haute couture, specializing in luxury goods . She gained the name "Coco" while maintaining a career as a singer at a café in France...

) have their headquarters in France.

The association of France with fashion

Fashion

Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...

  dates largely to the reign of Louis XIV

Louis XIV of France

Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...

  when the luxury goods industries in France came increasingly under royal control and the French royal court became, arguably, the arbiter of taste and style in Europe.

France renewed its dominance of the high fashion industry in the years 1860–1960 through the establishing of the great couturier

Couturier

A couturier is an establishment or person involved in the clothing fashion industry who makes original garments to order for private clients. A couturier may make what is known as haute couture. Such a person usually hires patternmakers and machinists for garment production, and is either employed...

 houses, the fashion press (Vogue

Vogue (magazine)

Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...

 was founded in 1892; Elle

Elle (magazine)

Elle is a worldwide magazine of French origin that focuses on women's fashion, beauty, health, and entertainment. Elle is also the world's largest fashion magazine. It was founded by Pierre Lazareff and his wife Hélène Gordon in 1945. The title, in French, means "she".-History:Elle was founded in...

 was founded in 1945) and fashion shows. The first modern Parisian couturier house is generally considered the work of the Englishman Charles Frederick Worth

Charles Frederick Worth

Charles Frederick Worth , widely considered the Father of Haute couture, was an English fashion designer of the 19th century, whose works were produced in Paris.-Career:...

 who dominated the industry from 1858-1895. In the early twentieth century, the industry expanded through such Parisian fashion houses as the house of Chanel

Chanel

Chanel S.A. is a French fashion house founded by the couturier Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, well established in haute couture, specializing in luxury goods . She gained the name "Coco" while maintaining a career as a singer at a café in France...

 (which first came to prominence in 1925) and Balenciaga

Balenciaga

Balenciaga is a fashion house founded by Cristóbal Balenciaga, a Basque designer, born in the Basque Country, Spain. He had a reputation as a couturier of uncompromising standards and was referred to as "the master of us all" by Christian Dior. His bubble skirts and odd, feminine, yet ultra-modern...

 (founded by a Spaniard in 1937). In the post war year, fashion returned to prominence through Christian Dior

Christian Dior

Christian Dior , was a French fashion designer, best known as the founder of one of the world's top fashion houses, also called Christian Dior.-Life:...

's famous "new look" in 1947, and through the houses of Pierre Balmain

Pierre Balmain

Pierre Alexandre Claudius Balmain was a French fashion designer. Known for sophistication and elegance, he once said that "dressmaking is the architecture of movement."...

 and Hubert de Givenchy

Hubert de Givenchy

Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy is a French aristocrat and fashion designer who founded The House of Givenchy in 1952. He is famous for having designed much of the personal and professional wardrobe of Audrey Hepburn, as well as clothing for clients such as Jacqueline Kennedy...

 (opened in 1952). In the 1960s, "high fashion" came under criticism from France's youth culture while designers like Yves Saint Laurent broke with established high fashion norms by launching prêt-à-porter ("ready to wear") lines and expanding French fashion into mass manufacturing and marketing. Further innovations were carried out by Paco Rabanne

Paco Rabanne

Francisco "Paco" Rabaneda Cuervo, more commonly known as Paco Rabanne is a Franco-Spanish fashion designer. He fled Spain for France with his mother when the Spanish Civil War broke out...

 and Pierre Cardin

Pierre Cardin

Pierre Cardin Cardin was known for his avant-garde style and his Space Age designs. He prefers geometric shapes and motifs, often ignoring the female form. He advanced into unisex fashions, sometimes experimental, and not always practical...

. With a greater focus on marketing and manufacturing, new trends were established in the 70s and 80s by Sonia Rykiel

Sonia Rykiel

Sonia Rykiel née Flis is a French fashion designer.Ethnically a Polish-Romanian Jew, Sonia Rykiel was born in Neuilly a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France, the eldest of five daughters of a Polish mother and a Romanian father. At the age of 17, she was employed to dress the window...

, Thierry Mugler

Thierry Mugler

Thierry Mugler is a French fashion designer and creator of several perfumes.-Childhood:Mugler was born in Strasbourg, France on 21 December 1948. His passion led him to focus more on drawing than on school and at the age of 9, he began to study classical dance...

, Claude Montana

Claude Montana

Claude Montana is a French fashion designer. His company, The House of Montana, founded in 1979, went bankrupt in 1997.Born in Paris in 1949 to a Catalonian father and German mother, Montana began his career by designing papier-mâché jewelry covered with rhinestones...

, Jean-Paul Gaultier

Jean-Paul Gaultier

Jean Paul Gaultier , born 24 April 1952 in Arcueil, Val-de-Marne, France) is a French haute couture fashion designer. Gaultier was the creative director of Hermès from 2003 to 2010. In the past, he has hosted the television series Eurotrash....

 and Christian Lacroix

Christian Lacroix

Christian Marie Marc Lacroix is a French fashion designer. The name may also refer to the company he founded.-Early life:Lacroix was born in Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône in southern France. At a young age he began sketching historical costumes and fashions. Lacroix graduated from high school in 1969...

. The 1990s saw a conglomeration of many French couture houses under luxury giants and multinationals such as LVMH

LVMH

LVMH Moët Hennessy • Louis Vuitton S.A., better known as LVMH, is a French multinational luxury goods conglomerate headquartered in Paris, Île-de-France, France. The company was formed after the 1987 merger of fashion house Louis Vuitton with Moët Hennessy, a company formed after the 1971 merger...

.

Since the 1960s, France's fashion industry has come under increasing competition from London, New York, Milan and Tokyo, and the French have increasingly adopted foreign (particularly American) fashions (such as jeans, tennis shoes). Nevertheless, many foreign designers still seek to make their careers in France.

Pets

In 2006, 52% of French households had at least one pet

Pet

A pet is a household animal kept for companionship and a person's enjoyment, as opposed to wild animals or to livestock, laboratory animals, working animals or sport animals, which are kept for economic or productive reasons. The most popular pets are noted for their loyal or playful...

: 9.7 million cat

Cat

The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...

s, 8.8 million dog

Dog

The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...

s, 2.3 million rodent

Rodent

Rodentia is an order of mammals also known as rodents, characterised by two continuously growing incisors in the upper and lower jaws which must be kept short by gnawing....

s, 8 million bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s, and 28 million fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

.

Art and museums

The first paintings of France are those that are from prehistoric times, painted in the caves of Lascaux

Lascaux

Lascaux is the setting of a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its Paleolithic cave paintings. The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the department of Dordogne. They contain some of the best-known Upper Paleolithic art. These paintings are estimated to be...

 well over 10,000 years ago. The arts were already flourishing 1,200 years ago, at the time of Charlemagne

Charlemagne

Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...

, as can be seen in many hand made and hand illustrated books of that time.

Classic painters of the 17th century in France are Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...

 and Claude Lorrain

Claude Lorrain

Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French Claude Gellée, , dit le Lorrain) Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French...

. During the 18th century the Rococo

Rococo

Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...

 style emerged as a frivolous continuation of the Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 style. The most famous painters of the era were Antoine Watteau

Antoine Watteau

Jean-Antoine Watteau was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement...

, François Boucher

François Boucher

François Boucher was a French painter, a proponent of Rococo taste, known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories representing the arts or pastoral occupations, intended as a sort of two-dimensional furniture...

 and Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Jean-Honoré Fragonard was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Régime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five...

. At the end of the century, Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era...

 was the most influential painter of the Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

.

Géricault

Théodore Géricault

Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings...

 and Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...

 were the most important painters of the Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

. Afterwards, the painters were more realistic, describing nature (Barbizon school

Barbizon school

The Barbizon school of painters were part of a movement towards realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870...

). The realistic movement

Realism (arts)

Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...

 was led by Courbet

Gustave Courbet

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. The Realist movement bridged the Romantic movement , with the Barbizon School and the Impressionists...

 and Honoré Daumier

Honoré Daumier

Honoré Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century....

. Impressionism was developed in France by artists such as Claude Monet

Claude Monet

Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...

, Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...

, Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...

 and Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...

. At the turn of the century, France had become more than ever the center of innovative art. The Spaniard Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

 came to France, like many other foreign artists, to deploy his talents there for decades to come. Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Cézanne were painting then. Cubism

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

 is an avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 movement born in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century.

The Louvre

Louvre

The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...

 in Paris is one of the most famous and the largest art museums in the world, created by the new revolutionary regime in 1793 in the former royal palace. It holds a vast amount of art of French and other artists, e.g. the Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa is a portrait by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is a painting in oil on a poplar panel, completed circa 1503–1519...

, by Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

, and classical Greek Venus de Milo

Venus de Milo

Aphrodite of Milos , better known as the Venus de Milo, is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture. Created at some time between 130 and 100 BC, it is believed to depict Aphrodite the Greek goddess of love and beauty. It is a marble sculpture, slightly...

 and ancient works of culture and art from Egypt and the Middle East.

Music

France boasts a wide variety of indigenous folk music

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

, as well as styles played by immigrants from Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

 and Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

. In the field of classical music

Classical music

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

, France has produced a number of legendary composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

s, like Gabriel Faure

Gabriel Fauré

Gabriel Urbain Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th century composers...

, while modern pop music has seen the rise of popular French hip hop

French hip hop

French hip hop is the hip hop music style which was developed in France, and is considered the second worldwide hip hop scene after the U.S....

, French rock

French rock

French rock is a form of rock music produced in France, primarily in the French language.In the 1970s, France saw the arrival of Alan Stivell's Breton folk-rock as well as a wave of progressive rock bands like Ange, Shylock, Magma, Eskaton, Atoll and Pulsar. French punk rock also appeared,...

, techno

Techno

Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...

/funk

Funk

Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

, and turntablists/djs.

The Fête de la Musique

Fête de la Musique

The Fête de la Musique, also known as World Music Day, is a music festival taking place on June 21.-History:The idea was first broached in 1976 by American musician Joel Cohen, then employed by the national French radio station France Musique. Cohen proposed an all-night music celebration at the...

 was created in France (first held in 1982), a music festival, which has since become worldwide . It takes place every June 21, on summer's day.

Cinema

France is the birthplace of cinema

Auguste and Louis Lumière

The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean , were among the earliest filmmakers in history...

 and was responsible for many of its early significant contributions. Several important cinematic movements, including the Nouvelle Vague, began in the country.

Additionally, France is an important Francophone

Francophone

The adjective francophone means French-speaking, typically as primary language, whether referring to individuals, groups, or places. Often, the word is used as a noun to describe a natively French-speaking person....

 film production country. A certain amount of the movies created share international distribution in the western hemisphere thanks to Unifrance

Unifrance

Unifrance is an organisation for promoting French films outside France. It is managed by the Centre National de la Cinématographie. It has several hundred members who include film makers, directors, screenwriters and agents....

. Although French cinema industry is rather small in terms of budget and revenues, it enjoys qualitative screenplay, cast and story telling. French Cinema is often portrayed as more liberal in terms of subjects (Sex, Society, Politics, Historical) and therefore often gets critical acclaim.
Within the domestic market, French movies are ranked through n° of entries. Movies are premiered on Wednesdays.

Most famous genres are:

• - Romantic Drama Heartbreaker
  Heartbreaker (2010 film)
  Heartbreaker is a 2010 French romantic comedy film starring Romain Duris, Vanessa Paradis, Julie Ferrier and Andrew Lincoln.-Plot:The bulk of the story takes place in Monaco...
  
  (l'Arnacoeur)
• - Comedy Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis
  Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis
  Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis is a 2008 French comedy film starring Kad Merad, Dany Boon and Zoé Félix.The film has broken nearly every box office record in France: it debuted as the top film with US$31.67 million at 793 sites. As of 28 February 2010, the film had been seen by 20.5 million people in...
  
   (les Visiteurs) (la Cité de la Peur)
• - Society La Haine
  La Haine
  La Haine is a 1995 French black-and-white film written, co-edited, and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. It is commonly released under its French title in the English-speaking world, although its American VHS release was entitled Hate. It is about three teenage friends and their struggle to live in...
  
  
• - Historical Cyrano de Bergerac
  Cyrano de Bergerac
  Hercule-Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac was a French dramatist and duelist. He is now best remembered for the works of fiction which have been woven, often very loosely, around his life story, most notably the 1897 play by Edmond Rostand...
  
  
• - Political / Animation: Persepolis
  Persepolis
  Perspolis was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire . Persepolis is situated northeast of the modern city of Shiraz in the Fars Province of modern Iran. In contemporary Persian, the site is known as Takht-e Jamshid...
  
  

French actors appear and star in Hollywood productions, such as Vincent Cassel

Vincent Cassel

Vincent Cassel is a Cesar award winning French actor probably best known to English-speaking audiences through his performances in the Ocean's Trilogy of films and Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan.-Personal life:...

 and Marion Cotillard

Marion Cotillard

Marion Cotillard is a French actress and singer. She garnered critical acclaim for her roles in films such as La Vie en Rose, My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument, Taxi, Furia and Jeux d'enfants...

.

"Going to the movies" is a popular activity within metropolitan areas. Many cinema operators offer a "flat-rate pass" for approx. 30€ per month. Prices per movie range Between 5€50 to 10€.

French major cinema operators are UGC

UGC

UGC is the second largest cinema operator in Europe with, as of August 2005, 49 sites and 553 screens across four countries:* France: 37 cinemas, 357 screens* Spain: 5 cinemas, 88 screens* Belgium: 3 cinemas, 43 screens* Italy: 4 cinemas, 66 screens...

 and Pathé

Pathé

Pathé or Pathé Frères is the name of various French businesses founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France.-History:...

, mainly located in city suburbs due to the number of screens and seating capacity.

Within France many "small" cinemas are located in the downtown parts of a city, resisting the big cinema operators nationwide. Another element is that Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 has the highest density of cinemas (movie theaters) in the world : biggest number of movie theaters per inhabitants, and that in most "downtown Paris" movie theaters, foreign movies which would be secluded to "art houses" cinemas in other places, are shown alongside "mainstream" works as Parisians are avid movie-goers. Proximity of restaurants, accessibility, ambiance and the showing of alternative foreign movies is often cited as being the advantage of these small theaters.

The Cinémathèque Française

Cinémathèque Française

The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...

 holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films unrestricted by country of origin.

Books, newspapers and magazines

France has the reputation of being a "literary culture", and this image is reinforced by such things as the importance of French literature

French literature

French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...

 in the French educational system, the attention paid by the French media to French book fairs and book prizes (like the Prix Goncourt

Prix Goncourt

The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...

, Prix Renaudot

Prix Renaudot

The Prix Théophraste-Renaudot or Prix Renaudot is a French literary award which was created in 1926 by ten art critics awaiting the results of the deliberation of the jury of the Prix Goncourt....

 or Prix Femina

Prix Femina

The Prix Femina is a French literary prize created in 1904 by 22 writers for the magazine La Vie heureuse . The prize is decided each year by an exclusively female jury, although the authors of the winning works do not have to be women...

) and by the popular success of the (former) literary television show "Apostrophes" (hosted by Bernard Pivot

Bernard Pivot

Bernard Pivot, OC, CQ is a journalist, interviewer and host of French cultural television programmes. He is a member of the Académie Goncourt.-Biography:Pivot was born in Lyon, the son of grocers...

).

Although the official literacy rate of France is 99%, some estimates have placed functional illiteracy

Functional illiteracy

Functional illiteracy is a term used to describe reading and writing skills that are inadequate "to manage daily living and employment tasks that require reading skills beyond a basic level." Functional illiteracy is contrasted with illiteracy in the strict sense, meaning the inability to read or...

 at between 10% and 20% of the adult population (and higher in the prison population).

While reading remains a favorite pastime of French youth today, surveys show that it has decreased in importance compared to music, television, sports and other activities. The crisis of academic publishing

Academic publishing

Academic publishing describes the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in journal article, book or thesis form. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted is often called...

 has also hit France (see, for example, the financial difficulties of the Presses universitaires de France (PUF), France's premier academic publishing house, in the 1990s).

Literary taste in France remains centered on the novel (26.4% of book sales in 1997), although the French read more non-fiction essays and books on current affairs than the British or Americans. Contemporary novels, including French translations of foreign novels, lead the list (13% of total books sold), followed by sentimental novels (4.1%), detective and spy fiction (3.7%), "classic" literature (3.5%), science fiction and horror (1.3%) and erotic fiction (0.2%). About 30% of all fiction sold in France today is translated from English (authors such as William Boyd

William Boyd (writer)

William Boyd, CBE is a Scottish novelist and screenwriter.-Biography:Of Scottish descent, Boyd spent his early life in Ghana and Nigeria, in Africa...

, John le Carré

John le Carré

David John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...

, Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan

Ian Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"....

, Paul Auster

Paul Auster

Paul Benjamin Auster is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy , Moon Palace , The Music of Chance , The Book of Illusions and The Brooklyn Follies...

 and Douglas Kennedy

Douglas Kennedy (writer)

Douglas Kennedy is an internationally renowned and bestselling novelist. His 10 novels havebeen translated in 22 countries. His latest novel, , to be published in paperback with...

 are well received).

An important subset of book sales is comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

s (typically Franco-Belgian comics

Franco-Belgian comics

Franco-Belgian comics are comics that are created in Belgium and France. These countries have a long tradition in comics and comic books, where they are known as BDs, an abbreviation of bande dessinée in French and stripverhalen in Dutch...

 like Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin is a series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist , who wrote under the pen name of Hergé...

 and Astérix

Asterix

Asterix or The Adventures of Asterix is a series of French comic books written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo . The series first appeared in French in the magazine Pilote on October 29, 1959...

) which are published in a large hardback format; comic books represented 4% of total book sales in 1997. French artists have made the country a leader in the graphic novel

Graphic novel

A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...

 genre and France hosts the Angoulême International Comics Festival

Angoulême International Comics Festival

The Angoulême International Comics Festival is the largest comics festival in Europe. It has occurred every year since 1974 in Angoulême, France, in the month of January.The four-day festival is notable for awarding several prestigious prizes in cartooning...

, Europe's preeminent comics festival.

Like other areas of French culture, book culture is influenced, in part, by the state, in particular by the "Direction du livre et de la lecture" of the Ministry of Culture, which oversees the "Centre national du livre" (National Book Center). The French Ministry of Industry also plays a role in price control. Finally, the VAT

Value added tax

A value added tax or value-added tax is a form of consumption tax. From the perspective of the buyer, it is a tax on the purchase price. From that of the seller, it is a tax only on the "value added" to a product, material or service, from an accounting point of view, by this stage of its...

 for books and other cultural products in France is at the reduced rate of 5.5%, which is also that of food and other necessities (see here).

In terms of journalism in France, the regional press (see list of newspapers in France) has become more important than national dailies (such as Le Monde

Le Monde

Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...

 and Le Figaro

Le Figaro

Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...

) over the past century: in 1939, national dailies were 2/3 of the dailies market, while today they are less than 1/4. The magazine market is currently dominated by TV listings magazines followed by news magazines such as Le Nouvel Observateur

Le Nouvel Observateur

Le Nouvel Observateur is a weekly French newsmagazine. Based in Paris, it is the most prominent French general information magazine in terms of audience and circulation ....

, L'Express

L'Express (France)

L'Express is a French weekly news magazine. When founded in 1953 during the First Indochina War, it was modelled on the US magazine TIME.-History:...

 and Le Point

Le Point

Le Point is a French weekly news magazine. It was founded in 1972 by a group of journalists who had, one year earlier, left the editorial team of L'Express, which was then owned by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, a député of the Parti Radical...

.
Transportation
There are significant differences in lifestyles with respect to transportation between very urbanized regions such as Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, and smaller towns and rural areas. In Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, and to a lesser extent in other major cities, many households do not own an automobile

Automobile

An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...

 and simply use efficient mass transportation.The cliché

Cliché

A cliché or cliche is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. In phraseology, the term has taken on a more technical meaning,...

 about the parisien is rush hour

Rush hour

A rush hour or peak hour is a part of the day during which traffic congestion on roads and crowding on public transport is at its highest. Normally, this happens twice a day—once in the morning and once in the evening, the times during when the most people commute...

 in the Métro

Paris Métro

The Paris Métro or Métropolitain is the rapid transit metro system in Paris, France. It has become a symbol of the city, noted for its density within the city limits and its uniform architecture influenced by Art Nouveau. The network's sixteen lines are mostly underground and run to 214 km ...

subway. However, outside of such areas, ownership of one or more cars is standard, especially for households with children.

The TGV

TGV

The TGV is France's high-speed rail service, currently operated by SNCF Voyages, the long-distance rail branch of SNCF, the French national rail operator....

 high speed rail network, train à grande vitesse is a fast rail transport which serves several areas of the country and is self financing. There are plans to reach most parts of France and many other destinations in Europe in coming years. Rail services to major destinations are punctual and frequent.
Holidays

Despite the principles of laïcité and the separation of church from state, public and school holidays in France generally follow the Roman Catholic religious calendar (including Easter

Easter

Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...

, Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

, Ascension Day, Pentecost

Pentecost

Pentecost is a prominent feast in the calendar of Ancient Israel celebrating the giving of the Law on Sinai, and also later in the Christian liturgical year commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ after the Resurrection of Jesus...

, Assumption of Mary

Assumption of Mary

According to the belief of Christians of the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and parts of the Anglican Communion and Continuing Anglicanism, the Assumption of Mary was the bodily taking up of the Virgin Mary into Heaven at the end of her life...

, All Saints Day, etc.). Labor Day

Labor Day

Labor Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September that celebrates the economic and social contributions of workers.-History:...

 and the National Holiday are the only business holidays determined by government statute; the other holidays are granted by convention collective (agreement between employers' and employees' unions) or by agreement of the employer.

The five holiday periods of the public school year are:

• the vacances de la Toussaint (All Saints Day) - one and a half weeks starting near the end of October.
• the vacances de Noël (Christmas
  Christmas
  Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
  
  ) - two weeks, ending after New Years.
• the vacances d'hiver (winter
  Winter
  Winter is the coldest season of the year in temperate climates, between autumn and spring. At the winter solstice, the days are shortest and the nights are longest, with days lengthening as the season progresses after the solstice.-Meteorology:...
  
  ) - two weeks in February and March.
• the vacances de printemps (spring
  Spring (season)
  Spring is one of the four temperate seasons, the transition period between winter and summer. Spring and "springtime" refer to the season, and broadly to ideas of rebirth, renewal and regrowth. The specific definition of the exact timing of "spring" varies according to local climate, cultures and...
  
  ), formerly vacances de Pâques (Easter
  Easter
  Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...
  
  ) - two weeks in April and May.
• the vacances d'été (summer
  Summer
  Summer is the warmest of the four temperate seasons, between spring and autumn. At the summer solstice, the days are longest and the nights are shortest, with day-length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice...
  
  ), or grandes vacances (literally: big holidays) - two months in July and August.

On May 1, Labour Day

Labour Day

Labour Day or Labor Day is an annual holiday to celebrate the economic and social achievements of workers. Labour Day has its origins in the labour union movement, specifically the eight-hour day movement, which advocated eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation, and eight hours for...

 (La Fête du Travail) the French give flowers of Lily of the Valley

Lily of the Valley

Convallaria majalis , commonly known as the lily-of-the-valley, is a poisonous woodland flowering plant native throughout the cool temperate Northern Hemisphere in Asia and Europe....

 (Le Muguet) to one another.

The National holiday (called Bastille Day

Bastille Day

Bastille Day is the name given in English-speaking countries to the French National Day, which is celebrated on 14 July of each year. In France, it is formally called La Fête Nationale and commonly le quatorze juillet...

 in English) is on the 14 of July. Military parades, called Défilés du 14 juillet

Bastille Day Military Parade

The Bastille Day Military Parade is a French military parade that has been held on the morning of 14 July each year in Paris since 1880, almost without exception....

, are held, the largest on the Champs-Élysées

Champs-Élysées

The Avenue des Champs-Élysées is a prestigious avenue in Paris, France. With its cinemas, cafés, luxury specialty shops and clipped horse-chestnut trees, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées is one of the most famous streets and one of the most expensive strip of real estate in the world. The name is...

 avenue in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in front of the President of the Republic.

On November 2, All Souls Day

All Souls Day

All Souls' Day commemorates the faithful departed. In Western Christianity, this day is observed principally in the Catholic Church, although some churches of Anglican Communion and the Old Catholic Churches also celebrate it. The Eastern Orthodox Church observes several All Souls' Days during the...

 (La Fête des morts), the French traditionally bring chrysanthemum

Chrysanthemum

Chrysanthemums, often called mums or chrysanths, are of the genus constituting approximately 30 species of perennial flowering plants in the family Asteraceae which is native to Asia and northeastern Europe.-Etymology:...

s to the tombs of departed family members.

On November 11, Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth countries since the end of World War I to remember the members of their armed forces who have died in the line of duty. This day, or alternative dates, are also recognized as special days for war remembrances in many non-Commonwealth...

 (Le Jour de la Commémoration or L' Armistice) is an official holiday.

Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

 is generally celebrated in France on Christmas Eve by a traditional meal (typical dishes include oyster

Oyster

The word oyster is used as a common name for a number of distinct groups of bivalve molluscs which live in marine or brackish habitats. The valves are highly calcified....

s, boudin blanc and the bûche de Noël

Bûche de Noël

Bûche de Noël is a traditional dessert served near Christmas in France, Belgium, Canada, Lebanon, Vietnam, and several other francophone countries and former French colonies...

), by opening presents and by attending the midnight mass

Midnight Mass

Midnight Mass is a Christmas Eve liturgical tradition in the Roman Catholic church.Midnight Mass may also refer to:* Midnight, Mass., a Vertigo comics series* Midnight Mass, a 2004 novel by F...

 (even among Catholics who do not attend church at other times of the year).

Candlemas

Presentation of Jesus at the Temple

The Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, which falls on 2 February, celebrates an early episode in the life of Jesus. In the Eastern Orthodox Church and some Eastern Catholic Churches, it is one of the twelve Great Feasts, and is sometimes called Hypapante...

 (La Chandeleur) is celebrated with crêpe

Crêpe

A crêpe or crepe , is a type of very thin pancake, usually made from wheat flour or buckwheat flour . The word is of French origin, deriving from the Latin crispa, meaning "curled". While crêpes originate from Brittany, a region in the northwest of France, their consumption is widespread in France...

s. The popular saying is that if the cook can flip a crêpe singlehandedly with a coin in the other hand, the family is assured of prosperity throughout the coming year.

The Anglo-Saxon and American holiday Halloween

Halloween

Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...

 has grown in popularity following its introduction in the mid-1990s by the trade associations. The growth seems to have stalled during the following decade.
Conventions

• France is the home of the International System of Units
  International System of Units
  The International System of Units is the modern form of the metric system and is generally a system of units of measurement devised around seven base units and the convenience of the number ten. The older metric system included several groups of units...
  
   (the metric system). Some pre-metric units are still used, essentially the livre (a unit of weight equal to half a kilogram) and the quintal
  Quintal
  Quintal may refer to:* Quintal , a unit of mass* Quartal and quintal harmony in music* Quintal, Haute-Savoie, a commune of the Haute-Savoie département in France* Stéphane Quintal, NHL ice hockey player...
  
  (a unit of weight equal to 100 kilograms).
• In mathematics
  Mathematics
  Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
  
  , France uses the infix notation
  Infix notation
  Infix notation is the common arithmetic and logical formula notation, in which operators are written infix-style between the operands they act on . It is not as simple to parse by computers as prefix notation or postfix notation Infix notation is the common arithmetic and logical formula notation,...
  
   like most countries. For large numbers the long scale
  Long and short scales
  The long and short scales are two of several different large-number naming systems used throughout the world for integer powers of ten. Many countries, including most in continental Europe, use the long scale whereas most English-speaking countries use the short scale...
  
   is used. Thus, the French use the word billion for the number 1,000,000,000,000, which in countries using short scale
  Long and short scales
  The long and short scales are two of several different large-number naming systems used throughout the world for integer powers of ten. Many countries, including most in continental Europe, use the long scale whereas most English-speaking countries use the short scale...
  
   is called a trillion. However, there exists a French word, milliard, for the number 1,000,000,000, which in countries using the short scale is called a billion. Thus, despite the use of the long scale, one billion is called un milliard ("one milliard") in French, and not mille millions ("one thousand million"). It should also be noted that names of numbers above the milliard are rarely used. Thus, one trillion will most often be called mille milliards (“one thousand milliard”) in French, and rarely un billion.
• In the French numeral notation, the comma is the decimal separator
  Decimal separator
  Different symbols have been and are used for the decimal mark. The choice of symbol for the decimal mark affects the choice of symbol for the thousands separator used in digit grouping. Consequently the latter is treated in this article as well....
  
  , whereas a space is used between each group of three digits (fifteen million five hundred thousand and thirty-two should be written as 15 500 032). In finance, the currency symbol is used as a decimal separator or put after the number. For example, €25,048.05 is written either 25 048€05 or 25 048,05 € (always with an extra space between the figure and the currency symbol).
• In computing, a bit
  Bit
  A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states...
  
   is called a bit yet a byte
  Byte
  The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...
  
   is called an octet
  Octet (computing)
  An octet is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that consists of eight bits. The term is often used when the term byte might be ambiguous, as there is no standard for the size of the byte.-Overview:...
  
   (from the Latin root octo, meaning "8"). SI prefix
  SI prefix
  The International System of Units specifies a set of unit prefixes known as SI prefixes or metric prefixes. An SI prefix is a name that precedes a basic unit of measure to indicate a decadic multiple or fraction of the unit. Each prefix has a unique symbol that is prepended to the unit symbol...
  
  es are used.
• 24-hour clock
  24-hour clock
  The 24-hour clock is a convention of time keeping in which the day runs from midnight to midnight and is divided into 24 hours, indicated by the hours passed since midnight, from 0 to 23. This system is the most commonly used time notation in the world today...
  
   time is used, with h being the separator between hours and minutes (for example 2:30 pm is 14h30).
• The all-numeric form for dates is in the order day-month-year, using a slash as the separator (example: 31/12/1992 or 31/12/92).

See also

• Architecture of Normandy
  Architecture of Normandy
  The architecture of Normandy spans a thousand years.- Vernacular domestic styles :In Haute-Normandie and in pays d'Auge, Mortainais, Passais and Avranchin , the vernacular domestic architecture is typically half-timbered and thatched....
  
  
• Catherinettes
  Catherinettes
  Catherinettes was a traditional French label for girls of twenty-five years old who were still unmarried by the Feast of Saint Catherine . A special celebration was offered to them on this day, while everyone wished them a fast end to their singlehood.-Origin:Since the Middle Ages, girls were under...
  
  
• Demographics of France
  Demographics of France
  This article is about the demographic features of the population of France, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects....
  
  
• Remarkable Gardens of France
• List of French people
• List of World Heritage Sites in France

External links

• Frenchculture.org
• Frenchcultureguide.com - French culture news website
• France in Brief / France From A to Z - Embassy of France in the US
• National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE
  INSEE
  INSEE is the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies. It collects and publishes information on the French economy and society, carrying out the periodic national census. Located in Paris, it is the French branch of Eurostat, European Statistical System...
  
  )
• Morrison, Don. "The Death of French Culture," TIME
  Time (magazine)
  Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
  
  
• Chardin's paintings are just an example of the importance of the French culture in the history of art
• French Painters who contributed to the Rococo and Neoclassical period are Boucher, Bouguereau and Jean-Léome Gérôme famous forgotten artists
• The French Culture in Lyon