Sainte Catherine

If you look at a calendar in France you will first notice that it starts with Mondays (I'm confused and get dates wrong here as I am still not used to starting with Sundays!) and then you might realize that on every day is written the name of a saint. That's why the first thing people do when they're looking for a name for their baby is to go through the calendar. I remember doing that with my family for my brother. Some people actually name their kids according to the day they were born. It can get tricky sometimes. Take my birthday for example. November 1st is not one saint in particular, it's "All Saints Day" and I know someone whose name is All Saints (Toussaint) because he was born on that day. I don't know what he would have been named had he been born the following day, which is the day of the dead (he would have had to be named "Deceased").

Anyway, if you don't have a calendar, you can also watch the weather guy, he tells you who is to be celebrated the next day. You're supposed to celebrate everyone named after the saint of the day. It's not a big celebration, merely an acknowledgement that it's his or her day that day, that it is his or her "fête." For example, Sainte Julie is April 8th. So, if you see a Julie (or a Julia) on April 8th you're supposed to tell her : "Bonne fête Julia!" And now you know why I am always so confused when I hear french speaking people here say "Bonne fête" for birthdays (the greeting for birthdays in France is "Joyeux Anniversaire"). When people ask me when my fête is I always want to say November 25th. People usually know when their fête is but not necessarily anyone else's. Well, we know Noel, of course. Sainte Catherine is actually well-known too because of the tradition associated to it, called the Catherinettes. If you're 25 or older and still single you go out wearing a hat. So, last year, when the school said they were celebrating Sainte Catherine, I was confused (I get confused a lot here!). But Julia told me what is was. They celebrate Marguerite Bourgeois, who emigrated to Canada from France to help the colonies back in the 1600s. She was the first teacher of what became Montreal. To celebrate Sainte Catherine on November 25th she would make a special candy, called taffy (tire in French) with her students (maybe she didn't like hats). At school Julia is told that this Marguerite invented that special candy in order to attract the natives to the school but I'm not sure that this is accurate. French were at war with the Aroquois, but I did find that she had 2 native students at one point. Anyway, now at the school, they celebrate by pretending to be in the 1600s, dressing as teachers or as native americans and eating tire.



This year, since Keld could stay home with the boys and since I'm so good at cooking and baking, I volunteered to go help make "tire" for the students. It's mainly made with molasses, corn syrup, vinegar, water. Yep, it's sweet.

You mix it all, boil it and then you pull (in French, you "tire")

After that you cut it into small pieces and wrap them.

You can put them all into one big piece too. 

No chocolate, but still, I had a good time on my fête!