French Sisters Are So “Happy”!

Everybody’s got to get into the act!

By now you’ve seen countless YouTube videos of people dancing to Pharrell Williams’ hit tune “Happy.”  According to some reports, thousands of videos have been recorded featuring the song, which was originally recorded for the movie Despicable Me 2.  What’s become a social media cliche takes on new interest, though, when the dancers are a community of French religious sisters.

The Sisters of St. Mary Spawn in Tarbes (Hautes-Pyrénées) recorded their own version of the “happy dance”–with the sisters mimicking an airplane, dancing with residents at a nursing home, holding a photo of Pope Francis, waving smiley-face balloons….  and just enjoying life.

“We wanted to break the image of austere religious,” said Sister Sandrine Jaunin, 26, who is head of communications of the congregation, in an interview with the French Catholic newspaper La-Croix.  “Although the sisters wear the habit, they are having fun.  There is the joy of living in this house.”

Sure enough, there’s nothing “austere” about this happy pantomime of the “Happy” song.  I especially liked to see some of the older, wheelchair-bound sisters enjoying themselves.