Bonne Fête Nationale!
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An interesting opinion piece.
https://unherd.com/2025/07/why-the-french-hate-bastille-day/?us=1
Today is Bastille Day — except in France. Spend long here, and you’ll quickly find that this national day of celebration is instead known simply as Le Quatorze Juillet. There are plenty of explanations, but probably the most convincing is that the storming of the Bastille, one of the foundational moments of the French Revolution, was also a bloody riot. The day ended with the prison’s director having his head sliced off with a pocket knife, the gory trophy paraded through the streets by jubilant Parisians. The unspoken implication, especially among the politer strains of French society, is that explicitly celebrating such violence would be improper, even if it remains central to the French Republic’s self-image.
