FESTIVALS & CELEBRATIONS
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JANUARY New Year’s Day Twelfth Night
MAY
FEBRUARY Valentine’s Day
JUNE
MARCH St David’s Day St Patrick’s Day
JULY
May Day
SEPTEMBER Harvest Festival
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APRIL Easter April Fool’s Day St George Day
AUGUST Notting Hill Carnival
OCTOBER Halloween
NOVEMBER
Bonfire Night Remembrance Day St Andrew’s Day
DECEMBER Advent Christmas Boxing Day
New Year´s Day January, 1st
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More than 10,000 dancers, acrobats, cheerleaders, musicians and performers meet in the heart of the city for a "celebration of nations."
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It starts as Big Ben strikes 12 p.m.
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Twelfh Night -January, 5thTwelfth Night (5th January) is when all Christmas Decorations should be removed. People said that if decorations were not removed, the house would have bad luck. If decorations are not removed on Twelfth Night, they should stay up all year.
Which did people think about that bad luck? People believed that tree-spirits lived in the greenery they decorated their houses with. They wanted to protect greenery and the tree-spirits during the winter days. Once this period was over it was necessary to return the greenery back outside to release the tree-spirits. It was also thought that, if you left the greenery in the house, the tree-spirits would cause mischief in the house until they were released. visit miĂŠrcoles 11 de abril de 12
Valentine’s Day
- February, 14th -
• It is the traditional day on which people express their love for each other by sending Valentine's cards, presenting flowers, gifts... • Traditionally, spring begins on St Valentine's Day (February 14th), the day on which birds chose their mates.
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Does the U.K. have a National Day? National Days are not celebrated in Britain in the same way as they are in other countries.
Only St Patrick's Day in Northern Ireland (and the republic of Ireland) and St Andrew's Day in Scotland (from 2007) are taken as an official holiday.
All the other national days are normal working days.
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April Fools’ Day -1stApril begins with a day of fun and jokes. No one really knows when this custom began but it has been kept for hundreds of years. This day is similar to “our” “Día de los Santos Inocentes”.
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Easter
- April -
Easter is the oldest and the most important Christian Festival, the celebration of the death and coming to life again of Jesus Christ. It’s the time for holidays and a time for giving chocolate Easter eggs. For Christians the custom of giving eggs at Easter celebrates new life. An Anglo-Saxon legend - the Easter bunny and eggs An Anglo-Saxon legend tells how the Saxon goddess Eostre found a wounded bird and transformed it into a hare, so that it could survive the Winter. The hare found it could lay eggs, so it decorated these each Spring and left them as offering to the goddess. Easter Eggs are hard boiled eggs with patterned shells.
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St George’s Day -April, 23rdIt’s England’s national day. St. George is the patron saint of England. His emblem is a red cross on a white background - the flag of England.He was a Roman soldier who protested against Roman’s torture of Christians and died for his beliefs. A famous scene is St.George killing a dragon. By tradition, 23 April is the day for a red rose in the button hole, the national flower. However, this day is a working day. miércoles 11 de abril de 12
May Day, 1st It’s the time when warmer weather begins and flowers and trees start to blossom. It celebrates the coming of summer. The tradition is a dancing around a Maypole, crowning a May Queen. People decorate their houses with flowers and greenery because they believe spirits bring good fortune.
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Notting Hill Carnival
(August)
• The carnival is celebrated on the last Monday in August. • It’s a way of celebrating and maintaining the cultural traditions of the Caribbean inmigrants around the Nottihg Hill area.
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HARVEST FESTIVAL
SEPTEMBER
It’s the time of year when all the crops are harvested. It’s a celebration of land gives food to us. Thanksgiving ceremonies are celebrated singing, praying and decorating churches with baskets of fruit and food. In schools and churches, people bring food from home to a Harvest Festival Service, and this food is given to people in need. Unlike the USA and Canada, the UK does not have a national day for Harvest Festival. miércoles 11 de abril de 12
October 31st,
Halloween No one really knows the origins of Halloween. Halloween= “All Hallow Even” (allow=saint; eve=night before) People celebrate Halloween with ghosts costumes, pumpkin lanterns and bonfires.
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•Halloween
is not exactly a typical holiday. Halloween celebrates lots of things, including the lives of people who aren’t with us anymore. •The origin we think is: hundred of years ago, Celts lived in Europe and on the British Isles. They believed that the souls of the dead visited Earth on October, 31st. They had a festival in honor of these souls of dead.
•Why the name HALLOWEEN?
In the 8th century, the Catholic Church declared November 1st to be All Saints’ Day. So, the people who celebrated this day were named “Allhallowmas” (hallow=saint). Then, All Hallows’ Day > All Hallows’ even> Halloween (the shorter name) miércoles 11 de abril de 12
Why do people dress up as ghosts, vampires and other scary creatures? They believed that if they appeared scary and dressed as monsters, ghosts..., they would scare away the spirits of the dead.
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Bonfire Night - 5th November
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In November 1605, 13 English Catholics planned to blow up the Parliament and kill the king because they wanted that James I was more tolerant with their religion. Today this is known as terrorism.
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They used 36 barrels of gunpowder and put Lords.
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The king men were warned of the conspiration, and the king was saved. Guy Fawkes, the main conspirator, was caught, tortured and executed.
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Since then, November 5th, English people cellebrate Bonfire Night with fireworks and burning effigies of Guy Fawkes on a bonfire.
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them under the House of
St. Andrew’s Day: The national Day of Scotland 30th November St.Andrew’s Day is celebrated in Scotland, in honour of the patron. St.Andrew’s was one of Christ’s 12 apostles. He was supposedly crucified by the Romans in a diagonal cross (symbol of Scotland’s flag, the blue stands for the sky).
The national flower of Scotland is the thistle. The legend tells a group of Scots were sleeping in a field when a group of Vikings wanted to attack them. One of the Vikings stood on a thistle, he cried so loudly that the Scots woke up. So, the thistle was considered as symbol of defence. The national dress is a kilt with shirt, waistcoat and jacket.
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Remembrance Day, 11th November
November is the time of the year British wear a red poppy in memory of those who sacrified their lives during the wars and conflicts. At 11am on 11th November 1918, the guns fell silent after more than 4 years continuous warfare. Remembrance Sunday is celebrated the second Sunday in November. People leave small wooden crosses by the memorials in remembrance of a family member who died in war. At 11am on each Remembrance Sunday a 2 minute silence is observed.
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Crhistma • • • • • •
It’s the time when Christians around the world celebrate the birth of Jesus. That is why we call this time of year 'Christmas' - we celebrate the 'Mass', or church service, for Christ. In Christmas, most people are on holiday in the UK and stay at home with their family on Christmas day. Christmas is celebrated on the 25th December, with a Christmas dinner for the whole family. During the weeks before Christmas Day, people send cards, watch nativity plays and go to carol services. People put up Crhistmas decorations in their homes and churches. In Christmas, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, the Queen gives a Christmas Message to the nation on radio and television.
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Christmas crackers are very popular and accompany many meals over Crhistmas period.
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It’s a brightly coloured paper tube twisted at both ends.
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A person pulls on each end of the cracker and when the cracker breaks, the contents fall out.
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It contains a paper crown, a small gift and a joke written on a piece of paper.
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In Britain, Boxing Day is usually celebrated on the following day after Christmas Day, which is 26 December.
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It’s typically a non working day in Britain.
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Traditionally, 26 December was the day to open the Christmas Box to share the contents with the poor. The Christmas box was a wooden container where people placed gifts. There is the tradition of giving money to workers or small gifts, and monetary tips to regular visiting trades people (the milkman, dustman, paper boy etc.) and, in some work places, employers give a Christmas bonus to employees. Schools gather gifts to be put in Christmas Boxes that are sent to poorer countries.
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