But I doubt it's followed or at least I'd bet many ignore it.
My French relatives love to eat and sit down for at least two hours. There's even a word for the after dinner feeling where you chat with friends, but alas je ne sais quoi.
This article is about a 100 years old law, who said alcohol is not allowed while at work, unless it's beer, cidre or poiré (alcohol from apple and pear respectively), and essentially a relic of when those were considered food and not alcohol, and we were giving wine to kids at school lunch.
Some employer thought their workers drinking WHILE WORKING was not ok, and they used the law to say wine is not banned, and it went to the courts.
You're free to drink whatever at lunch time, as long as you don't show up drunk, this is about drinking DURING WORK HOURS.
Really not sure how you could misunderstand that case so bad you qualify it as "It seems to have come to an end."
> Wine to kids at school lunch.
Never heard that one. My father's friends in boarding schools in the 1960s would have a glass of wine or apple wine (cidre) on sunday, but that was as wild as it got. But maybe it was a regional thing.
> En 1956, le gouvernement s'empare de la question de l'alcool dans les cantines scolaires. Pour la première fois, une mesure significative est adoptée. Désormais, aucun enfant de moins de 14 ans n'est autorisé à boire du vin à table
To add to this, my father started (France, in the 1990s) allowing my brothers and sisters to drink alcohol from our 12th anniversary on, some beer or wine. He'd stave curiosity, monitor and teach about the effects and there wouldn't be much in the house anyway. No one batted an eye. Same for the cigarette. You want to try? Here, this is the poor people's stuff (awful awful cheap tobacco...) and now let me tell you about how much it costs every week and what we can't afford because I can't stop, and now let's talk compound interest and cancer and teeth, and... there was no mystery or edginess in all this. The price of modern life, he would call it.
> My French relatives love to eat and sit down for at least two hours. There's even a word for the after dinner feeling where you chat with friends, but alas je ne sais quoi.
Are you thinking about the Spanish word sobremesa? Never heard such a similar word in French.
There is a cultural change and people drink much less wine at work during lunch breaks. But it's still served in a lot of work cafeterias.
Maybe work has become mless wine-compatible?
But long lunch breaks are still there.
My boss sometimes outright despises people in our company who take sandwiches "as if they couldn't spare 45 minutes to eat". Here, a 2-hour-long lunch break is a lot, but nothing that would get you strange looks if it doesn't happen everyday.
Of course, a good lot of employees (30% I'd say) are following the French law-mandated 151,67 hours of work per month (a little more for us because of special dispositions), so it doesn't really apply for them and they "only" get one hour of lunch break.
"Cadres" (theoretically managers, but practically what's in your contract) have more autonomy and work hours are not recorded.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/07/france-allows-em...
But I doubt it's followed or at least I'd bet many ignore it.
My French relatives love to eat and sit down for at least two hours. There's even a word for the after dinner feeling where you chat with friends, but alas je ne sais quoi.