Holidays, Festivals and Traditions

Holidays, Festivals & Traditions

- nations, minorities, religious or other specific groups of people that share the same cultural aspects (such as history/language/art) often also share the same holidays, participate in and organise similar festivals and keep alive similar traditions

- these features, specific to every cultural group, are mostly connected to that group´s history, its religious affiliation or the area and climate its members live or used to live in

- a large number of holidays, festivals and traditions are common for numerous different cultures (Christmas, for example), while some of them may be related solely to a nation´s one specific historical event, such as the holiday of 17th November celebrating the Velvet Revolution in the former Czechoslovakia in 1989

- holidays and festivals are usually celebrated and organised annually and, therefore, are tied to either a specific date (like the 4th of July in the United States), to a day of the week in a certain month (for example Easter) or just to one of the seasons (summer music festivals)

USA: New Year´s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, St. Valentine´s Day, St. Patrick´s Day, Independence Day, Columbus Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year´s Eve

UK: New Year´s Day, St. Valentine´s Day, St. Patrick´s Day, Easter, Halloween, Guy Fawkes Night, Christmas, New Year´s Eve

New Year´s Day

≈ the first day of a new year during which people make new resolutions (they set a certain task or a goal in front of them which they pledge to try to achieve throughout the new year)

→ in the States it is a day of massive shopping because of the New Year´s sales

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

≈ a public holiday celebrated on the third Monday in January in commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr.´s birthday (January 15th 1929) → M.L.K.J. was one of the most important and influential people of the 20th century in the United States leading a civil rights movement to secure racial equality for the African American population of the States in the 1950s and 60s

St. Valentine´s Day

≈ also called the lovers´ holiday, is celebrated on 14th February

- it is a day that celebrates love and during which people ask one another to be each other´s Valentines (not only boy- and girlfriends but mothers with their children or grandchildren with their grandparents as well)

- people buy cards for their loved ones and give each other flowers and small gifts

→ in Britain people usually send a card to the person they love or to someone whom they have fallen in love with (they hardly ever sign these cards and rather enjoy guessing who has sent them)

St. Patrick´s Day

• St. Patrick ~ the patron saint of Ireland

- considered himself a pagan until the age of 16 when he was sold to slavery and became closer to God during his captivity → after a successful attempt to escape, he studied for twelve years in the monastery of the bishop of Auxerre in Gaul → having returned to Ireland in order to convert Irish pagans to Christianity, Patrick was appointed the second bishop of Ireland → despite several arrests and escapes, he succeeded in building several monasteries throughout Ireland, setting up a number of schools and churches and converting pagans