this article deals with national celebrations and their symbolic values, emphasizing the dimension of the future. looking for national consensus, political authorities invest in the remembrance of important dates to find in the past a historical legitimity which allows the consolidation of collective memory. thus, behind national commemorations, we do come across the question of time and its relationship to the past of history and the present of memory. basing on paul ricoeur's analyses, this text tries, on one hand, to tackle the mechanisms of appropriation of historical times, and on the other, the construction and transmission processes of a social memory.
