Christmas Day – is a probably the most exciting day of the year for most children. English children enjoy receiving presents which are tradiioally put into the stocking, and have the pleasure of giving presents. Most houses are decorated with coloured paper or holly, and there is usually Christmas tree in the corn of the front room. Christmas is usually time to be with family, to feast and to merry.

    The traditional Christmas Dinner includes roastes turkey or goose accompanied by potatoes, peas and carrots, pudding – usually a coin or two will have been hidden inside it, and a part of the fun is to see who finds it.

    An essential part of Christmas is carol singing. No church or school is without its carol service.

     December 26 is called the Boxing Day. It takes its names from the old custom of giving workers an annual present in christmas box. Today it is the day to visit friends, go for a drive or a long walk or just sit around recovering from too much food. In the country there are usually Boxing Day Meets (hunts-fox-hunting). In the big cities and towns, tradition on that day demands a visit to the pantomime. One of the more familiar pantomimes recalls the adventures of Dick Wittington (and his cat) who lived 600 years ago. He became London’s chief citizen, holding office as Mayor 3 times. Other popular pantomime characters are: Robinson Crusoe, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Red-Riding-Hood and Puss in the Boots.

    New Year in England is not so enthusiastically observed as Christmas. The most common type of celebration is a family party. At midnight everyone hear the chimes of Big Ben and a toast is drunk to the New Year. The most famous celebration are in London in trafalgar Square where there is a big Christmas tree (an annual present from Norway), a big crowd is ususlly gathered and someone usually falls into the fountain.

    Another popular public holiday is Easter which comes in spring at different time each year (March or April). The world “Easter” owes its name and many of its customs to a pagn festival called “eostre” which is the name of the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring-time.  In England it’s time for the giving and receiving of presents: Easter chocolate eggs – (an egg signifies the Nature’s reawakening) – and hot buns. Traditionally, chicken eggs are hard-boiled and dyed various colours and hidden around for children to find. Kids are also given eggs to roll down hillsides and the one whose egg remains whole and intact  is declared the winner. Carnivals and merry-making parades are held in many places on the day before Lent. Passion Plays dramatising the Easter story are enacted widely in England. Many families have their Easter feast blessed by the priest by either taking their food to the church or by having the priest come home. Pretzels, a kind of bread, with their interlocked shapes, remind us of arms crossed in prayer and the now famous Hot-cross buns were first made in England for Godd Friday. There is a popular belief that wearing 3 new things on Easter will bring good luck.

    There is also May Day, people choose the Queen of May, erect maypoles around which people dance. The Summer Bank Holiday usually comes on the end of August. It’s an occasion for big sport meetings – mainly all kinds of athletics. Thre are also horse race meeting all over the country; there are large fairs with swings, roundabouts, coconut shies, bingo ang other games.

    Besides public holidays there are other festivals, anniversaries and simply days, on which certain traditions are observed: Pancake Day, April Fool’s Day, Halloween, Guy Fawkes Night, St. Valentine’s Day and others. There are working days, but people observe them in one way or another.

    Pancake Day (usually in March or April) is the popular name for Shrove Tuesday, the day preceding the first day of Lent. The day is usually characterized by merrymaking and feasting and eating of pancakes.

    In some villages and towns in England, there is a pancake race every year: one has to make, the pancake first and them run, tossing the pancake as one goes.

    The first day of April is known in England as All Fool’s Day – on this day practical jokes are played and any person, young or old, important or otherwise may be made an April Fool between the hours of midnight and noon. Widespread observance of April Fool’s Day began in the 18th century, in England. In Scotland, the making of April fools is called “hunting the gowk” as in the verse: “On the first day of April, hunt the gowk another mile”. April fools is an “April dowk”, a word for cuckoo, which is considered there, as it is in most lands a term of contemp, and an emblem of simpletons. Hunting the gowk was a fruitless errand, as was hunting for hen’s  teeth, for a square circle. The art of “taking people in” on the calends of April is limited only by man’s ingeniousness. Many specialise in contriving tricks to amuse others, and thus amuse themselves. At one time, the London zoo used to refuse telephone calls made on the morningof April 1, because of the number of people hwo had been fooled nto ringing up and askingfor Mr. Lion!

    Guy Fawkes Night on November 5 is one of the most popular festivals in Great Britain. It commemorates the discovery of Gunpowder Plot on November 5, 1605. it was planned by the Roman Ctholics to destroy the English Houses of Parliament and to blow up king James I together with the Lords and Commons who assembled to open the Parliament and seize power. But the organizer of the Plot Guy Fawkes was arrested and soon hanged. Now people make bonfires and burn on them figures of ragged dummy (“a guy”) made of old clothes and straw. During the day children put the guy in the cart and ask the passersby to spare a “penny for a guy”. The traditional food is toffee.

    Remembrance Day of November 11 is very important in Great Britain as on this day crowds of people gather at the Cenotaph (a war memoril in Whitehall), commemorating the dead of the two World Wars and stand for the 2 minutes of silence and the base is covered with wreaths laid by the Queen.

    On October 31st, the eve of all Saints’ day is celebrated. It is marked by costume balls or fancy-dress parties and is popular among children who play trick-or-treating game, and observe another custom-making jack o’lanterns out of pumpkins (the pumpkin is scraped out, eyes, nose and mouth are cut and the lighting candle is put inside). This is made to scare friends.

    On the 14th of Febuary people celebrate St. Valentines Day. It remains, as ever, a day to express love. «Be My Valentine» - englishmen with these word ask to become friends or companion. People of all ages send valentines, serious and comic, to their own true loves, and also to family members and friends. Valentines often are decorated with symbols of love - red hearts and roses, ribbons and laces. Since the identity of the sender of a valetine is traitionally a mystery, valentines are frequently unsinged and often are playfully addresed in disguised handwriting.

    Largely missing from today’s messages are excessive sentimentality of yore and the cruelty of the early so-caled comic vlentines. Apart from the serious rhyming declaration of love that still abound, the contemporary empasis is on the light touch.

2.2 Celebrations holidays in Greait Britian

    “Some historical and colorful customs belong essentially to a particular town or community because they sprang, originally, from some part of the local history, or from some deep-seated local tradition. No doubt, such customs, along with various religious customs and traditions, attached to certain calendar dated, constitute the soul of British social culture and are of great interest for a researcher.

    At Lichfield, a festival commonly called the Greenhill Bower and Court of Array takes place annually in late May or June. This is really two customs, of which the first – the Bower – is said to run back to the time of King Oswy of Northumbria, who founded Lichfield in A.D. 656. In the Middle Ages, the city guilds used to meet at Greenhill, carrying flower garlands and emblems of their trades. Now the Bower ceremonies have become a sort of carnival, wherein lorries carrying tableaux, trade floats, decorated carts, and bands pass cheerfully through streets profusely adorned with flowers and greenery.

    The second part of the custom is the meeting of the Court of Array and the inspection of the ancient suits of armour which the city was once obliged by law to provide. By Act passed in 1176, every freeman between the ages of 15 and 60 had to keep a sufficiency of arms and armour, and maintain them in good condition and ready for use. He had also to be able to handle them efficiently himself. Every county had to have its Court of Array whose duty was to see that these regulations were duly carried out by the freemen, and to hold periodical inspections of the weapons and suits of armour provided by them”.

    3) New studies (approximately 20 minutes)

    This part of the lesson is dedicated to the present topic: the Winter holidays. It basic part represents a text which must be read and immediately translated by paragraphs, one paragraph by every student, one by one. The text is approximately following:

    “The Christmas Day in the United Kingdom is celebrated on 25 December, as well as in the most of European countries. Pope Julius I (A.D. 337-352), after much inquiry, came to the conclusion that a very old tradition giving 25 December as the right date of the Birth of the Lord was very probably true. This date already had a sacred significance for thousands of people throughout the Roman Empire because it was the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun, and also the chief festival of the Phrygian god, Attis, and of Mithras, the soldier’s god, whose cult was carried to Britain and many other countries by the Roman army. In the barbarian North, also, the long celebration of Yule was held at this period. The Christian Church, therefore, following its ancient practice of giving Christian meaning to pagan rituals, eventually adopted 2 December for the Christmas Day.

    Many of the British modern Christmas customs and traditions are directly derived from pagan ceremonies belonging to ancient midwinter feasts. One of the oldest is probably the decoration of houses with greenery. Evergreens, which are symbols of undying life, were commonly used to adorn the dwellings of forefathers, and their sacred buildings, at the time of the winter solstice, and they have been so used ever since.

    The curious custom of kissing under the mistletoe seems to be altogether English in origin, and to appear in other European countries only when Englishmen have taken it there. It has almost vanished nowdays, but can still be met in the northern regions of England. The  kissing bough, the lovely garland that used to hang from the ceiling of the living room in so many houses before the coming of the Christmas tree, had a bunch of mistletoe attached to its base. It was a crown, or a globe, of greenery, adorned with lighted candles, red apples, rosettes and ribbons, with the mistletoe hanging below. Sometimes small presents were suspended from it. The Christmas tree surepceeded it in many homes in the middle of the nineteenth century, but it never faded away altogether.

    The Christmas tree came originally from Germany and went to America with German settlers before it reached the British Isles in the first half of nineteenth century. The first Christmas tree in Britain is believed to be set up at a children party in 1821. By 1840 the custom became quite well-known in Manchester, but what really established the Christmas tree and made it one of the British cherished Christmas customs was the setting-up by Prince Albert of a Christmas tree at Windsor castle in 1841. With little more than twenty years, the Christmas trees were to be seen in countless British homes, and thousands were annually on sale at Covent Garden Market. A century later the tradition has overflowed from the houses into the streets and squares. Churches of every denomination have their lighted and decorated trees, and since 1947 Oslo had made an annual gift to the people of London, in the form of an immense tree which stands in Trafalgar Square, close to Nelson’s Monument.

    The giving of presents and the exchange of Christmas cards are almost equally essential parts of the Christmas festival in Britain today. The first one has its roots in the pre-Christian times, and the latter is little more than a century old. Presents were given to kinsfolk and to the poor at the feast of the Saturnalia in pagan Rome, and so they were at the three-day Kalends of January, when the New Year was celebrated. The Christmas cards began life in the late eighteenth century as the “Christmas piece”, a decorated sheet of paper on which schoolchildren wrote polite greetings for the season in their best handwriting, to be presented to their parents at the end of the winter term. Sometimes, also, adults wrote complimentary verses for their friends. It is now usually supposed that the artist J.C.Horsley designed the first genuine pictorial Christmas card at the instigation of Sir Henry Cole in 1843.

    Father Christmas is the traditional gift-bringer in the United Kingdom. Originally he was Odin, one of the pagan gods that were brought to the British Isles from the ancient Scandinavia. When Christianity swept away the old gods, Odin’s role was overtaken by St. Nicholas, who was the Bishop of Myra during the fourth century, and who now appears in some European countries (such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland and others) wearing episcopal robes and a mitre, being accompanied by a servant carrying a sack of gifts.

    Still one should note that the pure British Father Christmas seems to have been more a personification of the joys of Christmas than just a gift-bringer. He was first mentioned in a fifteen-century carol, then abolished by Parliament in 1644 (along with everything else connected with the Feast of Christmas), came back after Restoration, and is nowdays one of the British living traditions. In the nineteenth century he acquired some of the attributes of the Teutonic Santa Claus, and now is being thought of as the essential gift-bringer, coming by night from the Far North in a reindeer-drawn sleigh, and entering the houses he visits by way of the chimney.

    Christmas food has always been largely a matter of tradition, but its nature has changed a great deal with passage of time. The turkey which is now the most usual dish on Christmas Day didn’t appear in Britain until about 1542. Its predecessors were goose, or pork, or beef, or a huge pie made up of a variety of birds. In the grater houses venison, swans, bustards, or peacocks in their feathers were eaten. The ancestor of another traditional British food, the Christmas pudding, was plum porridge (until 1670).

    Another feature of the Christmas time in Britain is represented by carols, which are the popular and happy songs of the Christian religion which came into being after the religious revival of the thirteenth century, and flourished more strongly in the three centuries that followed. Carols were swept away by Puritanism during the Commonwealth, and they didn’t come back into general favor for about 200 years afterwards, but never vanished altogether. Now, nearly all British churches have their carol service. In many towns, the people gather round the communal Christmas tree, or in the town hall, to sing carols under the leadership of the local clergy, or of the mayor.

    The 26 December is the St. Stephen’s Day, the first Christmas martyr, far better known in England as Boxing Day. A name is derived either from the alms boxes in churches, which were opened, and their contents distributed to the poor on that day, or from the earthenware boxes that apprentices used to carry round with them when they were collecting money gifts from their master’s customers. Until very recently it was usual for the postman, the dustman and a few other servants of the public to call at all the houses they have served during the year, and to receive small gifts from the householders on Boxing Day.”

    Then follows a set (3-4) of brief reports by students on the holidays that follow the Christmas season (that time which is called the Opening Year in GB). Reports are supposed to be prepared at home. The approximate variants of 3 reports are:

    -   “The New Year comes in very merrily in most parts of Britain, with the pealing of bells and the blowing of ships’ sirens and train whistles, and singing of the traditional “Auld Lang Syne”, although the majority know only some of the words. Great crowds assemble outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in London to see the Old Year out and welcome in the New. Private parties are held everywhere, and good wishes are exchanged. Some celebrate the occasion more quietly and see a Watch Night service in some Anglican or Nonconformist church.

    In the north of United Kingdom, especially in Scotland, the custom of First-footing has been flourishing for centuries. The First Foot is the first visitor to any house in the morning hours of 1 January. He is considered to be a luck-bringer. He is welcomed with food and drink (especially the last one), and brings with him symbolic gifts, which are most usually a piece of bread, a lump of coal, salt, and a little money, all of which together ensure that his hosts will have food and warmth and prosperity all throughout the year.

    In Northumberland the New Year is welcomed by a fire ceremony, followed by First-footing. A great bonfire is built in the main square of a town or village, and left unlit. As the midnight approaches, The so-called Guisers in various gay costumes form a procession, each man carrying a blazing tar barrel on his head. Thus crowned with flames and preceded by the band, they march to the bonfire, circulate it and throw their burning barrels on it, setting it on fire. The spectators cheer and sing, and the Guisers go off First-footing all round the perish.”

    -   “Another New Year custom is Burning the Bush, not very widely spread now but of great fame in the days gone, especially in the rural England. In former years, almost every home and farm had its own Bush, or howthorn globe which, together with a bunch of mistletoe, hung in the farm kitchen all through the year. At about five o’clock in the morning on 1 January it was taken down, carried out to the first-sown wheatfield, and there burnt on a large straw fire. Then all the men concerned in the affair made a ring round the fire and cried “Auld-Ci-der”. Afterwards there was cheering, and the drinking of the farmer’s health, and feasting upon cider and plum cake. Meanwhile, a new Bush was being made at home and hung up in the place of the old. All this was supposed to bring good luck to the crops.

    The Twelfth Night and Twelfth Day  - 5 and 6 January – are popularly so called because the mark the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Over the last two centuries, the twelve-day period had steadily shrunk, and now only three days – Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the New Year’s Day – remain as official holidays. Bonfires are lit on Twelfth Night in many parts of the British Midlands, often 12 in number, with one made larger than the rest, to represent Lord and his Apostles. Sometimes there are 13 bonfires, one standing for Judas Iscariot, which is stamped out soon after it is lit.”

    -  “The Monday after Twelfth Day is Plough Monday, a day of rural festivity, especially in the northern counties and the Midlands. Theoretically, work starts again then on the farm, after the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas, and the spring ploughing begins, but in fact, very little work is done.

    On 2 February, the double feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple and the Purification of Our Lady is celebrated in Britain. It is popularly known as Candlemas Day because candles are blessed in the churches then, distributed to the congregations, and carried in procession. This custom has existed on the British Isles since the fifth century, as well as in the continental Europe under the Roman Catholic Church influence.

    The day after Candlemas is the Feast of St. Blaise, who is the patron saint of wool-combers, and of all who suffer from diseases of the throat. The beautiful ceremony of Blessing the Throat takes place on this day in many English churches.

    Another famous and well-known February celebration is St. Valentines Day, on 14 February. The word “Valentine” has a double meaning. It means the person concerned, the chosen sweetheart, but it is also applied to the Valentine gift or to the Valentine card, which replaced the traditional gift in the nineteenth century as it (the gift) went out of fashion. “ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Conclusion 
 

            Every nation and every country has its own holidays and customs. Holidays make a nation special. Some of them are old-fashioned and many people remember them, others are part of people’s life. Some British customs and holidays are known all over the world: bowler hats, tea and talking about the wether.

    Englishmen have many traditional holidays, such as Christmas, St. Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Easter and others.

    Britain is full of customs and holidays. A lot of them have very long histories. Some are funny and some are strange. But they are all interesting. There is the long menu of traditional British food. There are many royal occasions. There are songs, saying and superstitions. They are all part of the British way of life.