Les Fêtes patronales

Back at the end of November and beginning of December we kept seeing ads for restaurant menus for the fêtes patronales. We knew it wasn't Belgian national day and were pretty sure it wasn't the king's birthday or anything like that, but didn't really know what all the fuss was about. On Friday, 4 Dec., the bank was closed and the cleaning ladies cleared out of our building before 11:00, early even for a Friday. We were perplexed. So finally I googled it. Turns out Belgians celebrate three big saints days in the first week of December:

- 1 Dec: Saint Eloi, or Eligius, bishop of Noyon-Tournai (just down the road from us) and the patron saint of goldsmiths, other metalworkers, and coin collectors;

- 4 Dec: Sainte Barb or Barbara, the patron saint of artillerymen, military engineers, miners and others who work with explosives because of her old legend's association with lightning, and mathematicians. We also heard, the first year we were here, that she's the patron saint of firemen. Ironically, one of our favorite stores in Mons burned down on Sainte-Barbe (see our blog posting from 5 January 2008).

- 6 Dec: Saint Nicholas, who is, according to one source, the patron saint of "several classes of people, especially, in the East, of sailors and in the West, of children."

So we added another bit of cultural trivia to our growing collection.