So today it's June 24 and it's Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. This may not seem like it, but this holiday is very important where I live. It is seen as the day to celebrate the province where I live. Like it could be compared to July 14th for France or July 1st for Canada. 

At first, this holiday was brought by French settlers celebrating the traditional feast day of the nativity of St. John the Baptist. Of course, it was a religious holiday but after the big revolution against religion in the 60's it became a regular holiday. Then in 1977, the prime minister declared the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day a national holiday.    

Nowadays, the Saint-Jean-Baptiste (also called: «la saint-jean») is either a holiday to drink or a day to attract independentists. 

This year, the Saint-Jean happens to be a Sunday so people have to opportunity (and they take advantage of it I can assure you) to drink a lot (also called « brosser») three days in a row. I'm not against drinking, but now each time I think of la saint-jean,  I see people smoking weed, binge drinking (like you would see in American teen movies) and la sain-jean shouldn't be only about this. 

About independentists, now I can understand why people would want the province where I live to declare independence but some people exaggerate too much. Like my summer job is to clean a public park and this afternoon there will be a patriotic speech and there are many flags of my province everywhere. I worked yesterday when they were preparing the event and it's discouraging. I feel like the only people who will come will be extremist and creepy people.

The Saint-Jean should be about being proud of our culture, proud of our ancestor who remained strong and kept their language and culture, even though they were under the British government. It's thanks to those people that we still speak French here. The main goal of this holiday should be about remembering our ancestor and all they had to endure so that today we can proudly claim Québec as a French-speaking province.