For 363 days a year, you could walk through our silent village in north Dordogne and assume it had been uninhabited for decades, but on one Sunday evening in early August, hundreds of people would mysteriously appear to share in the best night of the year: the dinner on the final evening of our local village fête.
As in villages all over France, the dinner was the culmination of a weekend of activities. The vide-grenier and the pétanque competition were popular, but the meal drew crowds from all around, attracted by an evening of conviviality and excess.
There was no booking, but somehow there was always enough for everyone – and that usually meant about 300, seated at long trestle tables under an open marquee.
Families would reserve their spaces on the paper tablecloths with marker pens, but it was always a struggle for the mayor to move the men from the buvette so the dinner could begin.
How the fête used to be:
Everything was cooked and served by the women of the village, operating from a tent beside the salle des fêtes, and it was always the same menu: jugs of kir, followed by half-melons filled with pineau des Charentes, soup, chicken in sauce, salad, cheese, then tart. Six courses that went on all evening.
Thanks to the wine and beer, diners would get up on the benches to dance and sing, accompanied by a local brass band. We loved taking visitors and would comment that if you took away the electric lights and the dodgems, it was a scene that had been unchanged for centuries.
After Covid, the fête returned – but it was not the same. The woman who ran the makeshift kitchen for years had called it a day and no one wanted to take on the task.
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Instead, we were offered a marché gourmand: a selection of food trucks.
This was fine in theory, but not great in practice. Instead of being served at table, we were expected to queue at a number of outlets. This year, we queued separately for a steak, for a brochette and for not very good chips. By the time we sat down, the food was rapidly cooling.
Worse: we had forgotten to bring our own cutlery (or indeed our tablecloth, as produced by neighbouring families). By the time I had humiliatingly begged for knives and forks from the incredulous organisers - pleading the ignorant foreigner - the food was colder still.
Worst of all: because everyone sat down at random times, the communal nature of the meal was lost altogether.
At least marché gourmand sounds French. This change is now happening all over and some villages are now advertising “Food trucks”, a term that is unlikely to win Académie française approval. “Food trucks”! More hipster Hackney than paysan Périgord, and another sign of the changing nature of French rural life.
A generational shift
Older villagers are no longer up to the task of maintaining the traditions of their parents and grandparents. Their children have moved away, probably to IT jobs in Toulouse or to international companies in Bordeaux.
They didn’t want to inherit their parents’ boulangeries or boucheries, so why would they return to cook 300 meals over a portable gas stove on a sweltering night?
All over the region, foreign newcomers are gamely doing their bit to help their French neighbours keep traditions alive but they are fighting a losing battle.
Maybe next year we shall think twice about attending. Or maybe we should just embrace the change – and set up a pizza van selling the modern French national dish.
Have you been to a village fête in France? Do you agree with Nick Jenkins that they have changed with the times? Let us know your experience via letters@connexionfrance.com
