Notable Dates and festivals
St. Andrew's Day (Scotland), St. David's Day (Wales), St. George's Day (England), St Patrick's Day (Ireland), St. Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Bonfire Night, All fools’ Day, Pancake Day, Mother’s Day, Father's Day, Remembrance Day, Red Nose Day, Up-Helly-Aa , Merry England and London May Queen Festival , Burns Night, Notting Hill Carnival, Harvest festival.
Here is info about some of them:
Christmas Day, December 25th, is probably the most exciting day of the year for most English children. They know that they will get presents, just as they do on their birthdays.
Traditionally, English children hang a stocking at the end of the bed on Christmas Eve. In the morning they check whether the stocking has been filled with toys, fruit and sweets. Larger toys will be nearby.
The morning will be spent playing with new toys, then comes lunch, often with the turkey or goose as the main dish. Afterwards there is Christmas pudding to be eaten. Usually a coin or two will have been hidden inside it, and part of the fun is to see who finds it. No doubt English hospitals receive urgent telephone calls every year from parents whose children noticed the coins only as they were swallowing them.
On December 26, the Boxing Day, traditionally people give each other Christmas presents, which used to come in boxes. It is a very pleasant custom indeed.
New Year's Day is a bank holiday though many Britons do not celebrate on New Year's Eve. In Scotland New Year's Eve is called Hogmanay and is an occasion for joyous celebrations. In London Scottish people gather on steps of St. Paul's Cathedral and sing «Auld Lang Syne» at midnight.
February 14this the day on which young lovers in England send each other anonymous Valentines – bright, lacy, colourful cards, with loving emblems and amorous doggerel. The shops are full of these cards.
Pancake day is the popular name for the Shrove Tuesday, the day before the first day of Lent. In the middle ages people on that day made merry and ate pancakes. The ingredients of pancakes are all forbidden by Church during Lent, that is why they have to be used the day before. The most common form of celebrating this day in the old times was the all town ball game or tug-of-war, in which everyone was tearing here and there, trying to get the ball or rope into their part of the city. Today the only custom, that is observed throughout Britain, is pancake eating.
Everyone knows that pancakes are delicious to eat, but do you know that in England, on Shrove Tuesday, people race with them, fight for them? At Westminster School, in London, the boys have pancakes for dinner on Shrove Tuesday. But before dinner there is the pancake fight. The school cook tosses a pancake high into the air. The boys (one from each class) fight for the pancake. The winner of the fight is the boy who gets the biggest piece of pancake. He wins a guinea (£1.05). And the boys who don't win? Well, at least they get a pancake for dinner!
Easteris one of the most important holidays in Christianity. In England it's a time for giving and receiving presents, mostly Easter eggs. We can say that the egg is the most popular emblem of Easter, but spring-time flowers are also used to stress the nature's awakening. Nowadays there are a lot of chocolate Easter eggs, having some small gifts inside. But a real hard-boiled egg, decorated and painted in bright colours , still appears on breakfast tables on Ester Day, or it's hidden in the house or garden for children to finny. In egg that is boiled really hard will last for years. Egg-rolling is a traditional Easter pastime. You roll the eggs down a clope until they are cracked and broken, after they are eaten up.
October 31st is Halloween, and you can expect to meet witches and ghosts that night. Halloween is an old word for «Hallows Evening», the night before «All Hallows» or «All Saints' Day». On one night of the year, ghosts and witches are free. Well, that's the traditional story. A long time ago people were afraid and stayed at home on Halloween. But now in Britain its a time for fun. There are always a lot of parties on October 31st. At these parties people wear masks and they dress as ghosts, witches or monsters and make special Halloween lamps from pumpkins.
November 5th is Guy Fawkes’ Day in Britain. All over the country people build wood fires or «bonfires», in their gardens. On top of each bonfire is a guy. That's a figure of Guy Fawkes. People make guys with straw, old clothes and newspapers. But before November 5th, children use their guys to make money. They stand in the street and shout «Penny for the guy». Then they spend the money on fireworks. But how did this tradition start?
On November 5th 1605, Guy Fawkes tried to kill King James I. He and a group of friends put a bomb under the Houses of Parliament in London. But the King's men found the bomb and they found Guy Fawkes, too. They took him to the Tower of London and there the King's men cut off his head.
Remembrance Day is observed throughout the Commonwealth and dates back to November 11, 1918 when all fighting in the First World War ended. It now commemorates British soldiers, sailors and airmen who gave their lives in the two World Wars. Special services are held and wreaths are laid at the Cenotaph, a war memorial at Whitehall, where thousands of Londoners observe the two-minute silence and participate in the remembrance ceremony. Similar ceremonies are held throughout the country.