Posted on September 27, 2021
This post is an updated version of my post published on September 27, 2010:
This holiday is celebrated only by the French Community of Belgium. This is mostly made up of people living in the southern half of Belgium (an area known as Walloon Region) plus many living in bilingual Brussels. The people of this community are Belgian, not French, but they speak French as their primary language.
French speakers in Belgium tend to live in the south
or in bilingual Brussels, the capital city.
The date for the French Community Holiday commemorates an important battle in the Belgian Revolution—a battle of French-speaking Belgians against the Dutch army. Interestingly, the Flemish Community of Belgium has a parallel holiday (July 11) that commemorates a battle victory of Dutch-speaking Belgians against the French army!
(By the way, note that there is a third region of Belgium, the German-speaking Community. It is tiny. These three “communities” are official institutions with their own governments.)
Can you see why French, Dutch (spoken in the Netherlands)
and German are the language communities of Belgium?
On this the French Community Holiday, French Community schools are closed, and there are many free concerts plus plays and sporting events.
- Belgium is host of the European Union—in other words, most of the EU's institutions are located there. The headquarters of NATO are also located in Belgium.
- Because both Dutch and French are quite closely related to English, and many Belgians from both language regions learn to speak English in schools, young Flemings and Walloons often chat with each other in English! That means that English is Belgium's lingua franca (a French term, adopted by the English language, that means “common language”)....
The only time I've been to Belgium, way back in 2002, I stayed with a French-speaking family in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, near Antwerp. And back then I ran into a lot of people who didn't seem to speak much English.
- Belgium is 321 times smaller than the U.S., but it has the same population as Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, the District of Columbia, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Alaska COMBINED!
- There are many castles in Belgium. Check out Bruno's website to see some.
Belgium is known for chocolate. It produces about 600,000 tons of chocolate per year. According to my sources, the world's biggest chocolate seller is the airport in Brussels, Belgium, which sells more than 2 tons of chocolate per DAY!
Belgians claim to have invented the fried-potato treat that are called French fries by Americans and chips by Brits. I love the fresh, hot fries/chips sold out of street carts in Belgium—partly because of all the yummy sauces we could dip them into! (I think there were 30 or 40 sauces offered by a typical friterie.)
A few of the sauces included mayonnaise, curry, tartare, barbecue, Andalusian, "Samurai" (not Japanese, but Belgian - it contains harissa), sweet and savory pickle sauce, herb-y Hawaiian sauce, spicy Dallas sauce, and something called American sauce (Amerikaanse saus) that turned out to be catsup!
With such delicious fresh fries so easily available, it's no wonder that Belgians eat (on average) 165 pounds per year!
Belgium is also known for its waffles and rice tarts and other bakery treats.
Also on this date:
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