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FRANCE EXPLAINED

How to have a traditional French Easter

Fish, flying bells and - of course - lots of chocolate. As Easter approaches, here's how to celebrate in the French style.

Published: 6 April 2022 12:25 CEST
Updated: 9 April 2023 09:00 CEST
How to have a traditional French Easter
Children take part in an Easter egg hunt organized by a French non-profit organization in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris on April 5, 2015. (Photo by MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP)

Holidays

France is, famously, a secular state, but it also has plenty of days off work for Christian holidays. At Easter most of the country gets just one day off – Easter Monday which falls on April 1st this year.

However if you are in Alsace-Lorraine you get both Good Friday (March 29th) and Easter Monday off – it’s complicated and it’s to do with war with Germany and trade unions.

French schools also get a two-week holiday around the Easter period, at different dates depending on the school holiday zones.

Flying bells

The first thing that happens over the Easter weekend in France is that all the church bells fly to Rome.

No, really.

French Catholic tradition says that on Good Friday, all church bells in France sprout wings and fly down to the Vatican to be blessed by the Pope.

READ MORE: Why is Good Friday not a holiday in (most of) France?

So no church bells ring between Friday and Easter Sunday morning, to commemorate the death of Jesus (and because they’re all in Rome, obviously).

After their getaway to Italy, the bells return to France laden with goodies for well-behaved children – namely chocolate eggs. 

Chocolate

Which brings us neatly to eating chocolate.

As with most countries, chocolate is very much the foodstuff of Easter and you will already see shelves full of chocolate eggs in supermarkets and patisseries.

As well as eggs, chocolate bunnies and chicks are also popular, plus chocolate bells and chocolate fish – a reference to the poisson d’avril.

Special cakes

As well as chocolate, the windows of boulangeries and patisseries also display beautifully decorated cakes and pastries.

There isn’t a particular traditional Easter desert in France, but it wouldn’t be a celebration without getting something from the patisserie to end the Easter meal.

Anything with chocolate is popular, particularly cute little chocolate nests, and seasonal fruit like the first strawberries are often seen too.

Easter egg hunt

A lot of towns organise a chasse aux oeufs (egg hunt) and several of France’s most beautiful chateaux also organise a hunt, so you can admire the stunning architecture and gorgeous gardens while the kids get hyped up on sugar and hunt for eggs.

Another rather messy tradition in some parts of the country is egg rolling or egg tossing. Raw eggs are either rolled down a slope or thrown into the air, and the last person to keep their egg intact gets a forfeit of chocolate from the other players.

Easter lunch

Easter is generally seen as a family occasion, and most French people will have lunch with relatives or friends. Since the schools are on holiday, many families travel to visit grandparents. 

Lamb is the traditional Easter food, symbolising Jesus and also new life, but plenty of people just serve what they like.

If you either can’t cook or can’t be bothered, a lot of restaurants do open on the Sunday, although it might be wise to book in advance.

Members of the Giant Omelette Brotherhood of Bessieres pour eggs as they cook a giant omelette. Photo by REMY GABALDA / AFP

Omelettes

The town of Bessières in south west France creates a 15,000-egg omelette on Easter Monday for the whole town to share, in a tradition that apparently dates back to Napoleon.

Hooded figures

And if you’re in Corsica over the Easter weekend, you might see a hooded man chained to a cross.

Don’t panic, this is perfectly normal, part of the traditional Catholic festival on the island and people volunteer to be the one on the cross.

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FOOD AND DRINK

Paris bakers attempt world’s longest baguette

A dozen French bakers have set their minds to beating the world record for the world's longest baguette - hoping to join a long list of French records from stretchiest aligot to biggest tarte tatin.

Published: 3 May 2024 13:36 CEST
Paris bakers attempt world's longest baguette

On Sunday, 12 Paris bakers will attempt to beat the world record for the longest baguette, as part of the Suresnes Baguette Show, which was organised by the French confederation of bakers and pastry chefs. 

The current record is held by Italian bakers, who in 2019 baked a 132.6 m long baguette – roughly the height of the Great Pyramid at Giza (which is now about 138.5 metres tall). 

By contrast, the standard French baguette is between 60 and 70 centimetres long, and roughly 5-7cm in diametre.

The French boulangers will have some challenges – they’ll need to knead all of the dough and then put it together on site. The only ingredients allowed are flour, water, yeast and salt. In order to count, the bread will have to be at least 5cm thick across its entire length.

According to the press release for the event, cooking the giant baguette will take at least eight hours.

Once it’s prepared, it will be up to the judges from the Guinness Book of World Records to determine if the record was beaten or not.

Then, the baguette will be cut up and Nutella will be spread across it, with part of it shared with the public and the other part handed out to homeless people.

What about other French world records?

There are official competitions every year to mark the best croissant and baguette, plus plenty of bizarre festivals in towns across France.

The French also like to try their hand at world records. 

Stretchiest aligot – If you haven’t come across aligot before, it’s basically a superior form of cheesy mash – it’s made by mixing mashed potato with butter, garlic, cream and cheese.

The traditional cheese used is Laguiole but you can also use tomme or any cheese that goes stringy when stretched. That stretchiness is very important – it makes aligot is a popular dish for world records. 

In 2020, three brothers managed to stretch the aligot 6.2m, and apparently in 2021 they broke that record too (though unofficially), by adding an extra metre.

READ MORE: 5 things to know about aligot – France’s cheesy winter dish

And in 2023, in Albi in southern France, local media reported that a man had made the world’s largest aligot (not the stretchiest). He reportedly used 200kg of potatoes and 100kg of Aubrac tomme cheese. 

Cheesy pizza – A Lyon-based pizza maker, Benoît Bruel, won a spot in the 2023 Guinness Book of World Records for creating a pizza with 1,001 cheeses on top of it. 

 
 
 
 
 
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Biggest raclette – In March, the city of Saint-Etienne in France claimed the world record for the ‘largest raclette’.

There were 2,236 people who participated, and the raclette involved 620 kg of cheese, 350 kg of cold meat and one tonne of potatoes. 

Largest omelette – Unfortunately, France does not hold this title anymore, though it did in 1994, when the town of Montourtier in the département of Mayenne cooked up an omelette on a giant pan with a 13.11m diameter. 

Currently, the title is held by Portugal, according to Guinness. In 2012, the town of Santarém cooked an omelette weighing 7.466 tonnes.

Still, France cooks giant omelettes all the time. Every Easter, the ‘Brotherhood of the Giant Omelette’ cooks up one, cracking thousands of eggs and passing out portions to the people in the town of Bessières.

Largest tarte tatin – The French town of Lamotte-Beuvron also beat a world record in 2019 for making the largest tarte tatin, which weighed 308kg. 

This isn’t the first time the French have experimented with gigantic apple pies. In 2000, the country made history (and the Guinness Book of World Records) for creating an apple pie that measured 15.2m in diameter. It used 13,500 apples and required a crane to be lifted (as shown below).

(Photo by MICHEL HERMANS / AFP)
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