I HAVE never paid too much attention to the 14th of July.

At university it provided a grand excuse for bacchanalian excess with French fellow students who spent an inordinate time arguing increasingly animatedly about the aspirations of Jacques Chirac and the weaknesses of the Left, while in later life it has offered repeated embarrassing opportunities to endure humiliating ignorance of fine French wines over dinner.

Until this year, I had never actually been in France on the quatorze, and I have to report that I found it an extremely arresting occasion.

The national set-piece is, of course, the three-hour military défilé along the Champs-Elysées. It is easy to shrug off the somewhat artificial pomp that cloaks official occasions in whatever country, and to be honest, choreographed pageantry on such a grand scale does seem out of place against the everyday chaos and bustle of modern life.

But this transcended Disney, with an expression of proud assuredness which reflects a country unaccustomed to hiding behind its moustache!

The spectacle of 450 soldiers in full dress uniform paying visible homage to the national flag conjured up mixed impressions. The first was the grandeur and permanence of the surroundings – how great the debt owed to General Dietrich von Choltitz that he chose to defy Hitler’s orders to destroy the city in the path of the advancing Allies.

The second was the vulnerability of the diminutive figure of the civilian Head of State acknowledging the salute of such a well-polished military machine – I found memories of The Day of the Jackal difficult to expunge.

Possibly the loudest applause for the marching groups greeted a detachment of volunteer firemen from Brittany. Like us, the French depend heavily on voluntary support for the state apparatus, and outside Paris some 84 per cent of firefighters are volunteers.

By comparison, the Anglo-Saxon version has traditionally shunned the overt swagger of Red Square and Pyong Yang. Trooping the Colour, where the monarch actually participates in the parade, and the annual Festival of Remembrance are delivered with ritual precision and palpable pageantry, but the jingoism tends to be internalised right up – that is – the chorus of Rule Britannia.

You could, of course, suggest that the less the confidence, the greater the desire to display. And aren’t we investors in people rather than hardware – even if these days our Hearts of Oak are increasingly likely to be equipped with Mercedes-Benz engines and US warheads?

Yet it is difficult not to view the recent adoption of Armed Forces Day as anything other than a cynical and transparent attempt by a discredited administration to manipulate public support for loyal but under-equipped British service personnel alongside veterans of past conflict.

So what motivates this annual upheaval? Someone must feel it justifies the one million euros bill on the books of the Municipality of Paris just to repair the road surface shredded by the parading tank treads in time for the arrival of the Tour de France riders two weeks later.

It would be difficult not to believe that the French just have it in their nature to participate in pan-national events – and the State readily indulges it. For a secular country, France observes more religious holidays than any other European country bar Italy. At play, they tend to cross national borders less than their neighbours – they just all go on holiday at the same time.

They share similar indulgences – the things we Brits always list when making our own excuses for visiting. But after food and wine, there is an extra passion which consumes the nation at this time of year: Le Tour de France.

It brings normal life along the route to a complete halt, it occupies hours of daytime TV and it dominates bar conversation across the generations. It shows off the best and the worst – from national rejoicing if a French rider grabs a stage win to high-spirited half-witted chasing along the course a hair’s breadth from the riders.

It stimulates the road graffiti artists and it creates the longest roadside motor-home park in Europe. The panoramic views scooped by the TV helicopters do nothing but emphasise the wealth of the national topographical and architectural jewellery box, not forgetting the aerial free advertising gained from tableaux set up for the cameras in the fields below.

And there’s prestige involved, too. Five minutes in the spotlight as the peloton races past is worth the day-long wait. Indeed, a Tour by-pass causes severe regional withdrawal symptoms.

There is a predictable collective bonding about all this: less charitably, it’s the sort of instinct which, at a stroke, can mobilise tractor and truck drivers to block highways and bring the country to a standstill on the pretext of pursuing a grievance – generally of an economic nature.

In true gregarious spirit, the evening of the 14th saw a colossal crowd of 700,000 gathered on the Champs de Mars under the Eiffel Tower, both to celebrate its 120th anniversary and to let their collective hair down enjoying a raucous ‘final’ (don’t hold your breath) public concert of the legendary Johnny Halliday. As his throat spluttered dry, the tower erupted in a spectacular firework display that would turn Terry MacDonald phosphorescent green with envy.

All the while, similar EU regulation-busting pyrotechnic extravaganzas and national feel-good parties were in full swing from St Malo to Carcasonne. Though our psyche might not accept the military grandstanding, if we could combine the Queen’s 100th birthday, Guy Fawkes, a domestic World Cup win and Glastonbury all in one, we still wouldn’t get anywhere near them. But what a party formidable that would be. And they do it every year!