Celebrating the Saints

We have been told that France is 90% Catholic. This certainly seems to be the case, as all private schools are Catholic and almost every church we see is a Catholic one. In some ways, the French seem to be much more old-fashioned or avid Catholics than the American Catholics that we know but in other ways, the opposite is true. We always think it's funny that our kids go to a Catholic school but can count on one hand the number of "religion" classes that they have actually had or the number of times they have gone to Mass at school. People are often surprised when we tell them that we are also Catholic. Their idea of America is that only a very small percentage of people are Catholic. One Catholic thing that we observe here is that the Saint's feast days are always listed in the paper. People actually know when their Saint's feast day is and they acknowledge it either with some good wishes or a small gift from their parents or god-parents. Tabitha and I will now be expecting to be noticed on July 26th for St. Anne! Another very Catholic custom in France is to give each boy (maybe the girls too, it might just be less noticeable), the name "Mary" somewhere in their long string of names, usually after their middle name.
Long, rainy day today filled with running kids to basketball, piano, drums, swim team, and music theory lessons....