Holidays and Anniversaries (customs and traditions)

Birth: When mother and child arrive home from the hospital, relatives and friends will visit them. English women often give babies presents before their birth at a party called a Baby Shower.

Birthdays and Name days: Children’s birthdays are celebrated. There is always a cake with candles and the birthday child gets presents. Adults also have parties and celebrations, but in the States, friends and relatives throw party’s for the birthday person. They don’t have name days in the USA.

Weddings: Americans don’t eat, drink, sing, or dance as much as Slovaks do at weddings. They wear the same clothing as we do. American women never rent a wedding gown. It is traditional for the bride to wear something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. The groom often rents his tuxedo. They have a maid of honour and a best man too. They don’t break plates at the restaurants and the groom doesn’t carry the bride inside. Wedding receptions in the USA usually last four or five hours. One of the wedding customs is tossing of the groom’s garter (házdanie kytice) over his shoulder towards all the bachelors. Whoever catches the garter will be the next one to get married. Americans usually decorate the car with shaving cream and tie cans on the back bumper so that they drag behind the car and make lots of noise. They don’t put a doll on the front of the car.
 
Death: American and British people don’t have a special day during the year when they visit their relatives´ and friends´ graves. When a person dies family and friends meet at a funeral parlour to pray and take one last look at the deceased. This is called a wake and usually lasts two or three days. The funeral takes place one day after the wake. After the ceremony family and close friends meet for a light meal.
 
Public holidays in GB are called „Bank Holidays“. All the banks, offices, schools, shops and factories are closed on this day. There are the following days: Good Friday, and Easter Monday, White Monday (seven weeks after Easter), August Bank Holiday, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. There are other days of the year which are not public holidays in England but the English people celebrate them in some way.
 
Christmas: December 24: Christmas Eve - Unlike the Continentals, the English have no traditional celebration on Christmas Eve. It is the only day of the year reserved for the “office party”. A lot of people spend the day shopping. Before English children go to bed on Christmas Eve, they hang up Christmas stocking at the end of their beds and believe that Santa Claus or Father Christmas rides through the air on a sledge drawn by reindeer and comes down the chimney and fills up the stocking with present and toys... It is the most important day of Christmas in Slovakia – we have Christmas dinner, built Christmas tree, give presents each other, go to church...
December 25: The most festive day of Christmas in Christmas Day. In the morning children enjoy unwrapping presents and at midday Christmas dinner is a great occasion. It consist of roast turkey with chestnut stuffing and roast potatoes and Christmas pudding. On Christmas Day the monarch addresses the nation and the Commonwealth on radio or television...
December 26: is called Boxing Day from the custom in earlier times of giving postmen, milkmen, dustmen, newspaper boy and the like small sums of money, which they collected in their Christmas boxes. Lots of people go visiting on Boxing Day or to parties in the evening.

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are not public holiday in England. In Scotland people have family parties. In the USA people generally go to parties to welcome the coming year. They make resolutions and promises.
 
Easter: Boys chase girls and they whip them with a willow cane. Some of them have water in a bucket or a bottle and they splash girls with it. Some boys also spray girls with perfume. Then boys are rewarded with painted eggs, sweets or money. In Britain on Easter Sunday - in the morning people go to church for a special Easter service. People usually send Easter cards to their friends and relatives. Children receive big chocolate eggs on Easter morning. They are hollow inside and they contain a packet of sweets.
 
Halloween: 31st October - the day before All Saints' Day. Children prepare their costumes (witches, fairies, monsters) and pumpkins - Jack Lantern, which are hallowed out and a face is cut into the pumpkins skin. Inside a candle is placed the tight of which shines out through the face. Children go „trick or treat“ in their costumes. This is when they go from house to house performing a little song or rhyme for sweets.
 
Thanksgiving Day: is celebrated in the USA. In September 1620 a group of English pilgrims arrived after 66 dangerous days across the Atlantic Ocean to their new home New England. Sometimes the Pilgrims fought with the Indians but they also learned a lot from them. The Indians showed them how to grow and cook new kinds of fruit and vegetables. The first winter was difficult. Many of the Pilgrims died because it was very cold and they had little food. In the spring they started to grow food, helped by some friendly Indians, and in the autumn of 1621 they celebrated their first harvest. The pilgrims wanted to give thanks, not only for the harvest, but for their new home, new life and new friends. Nowadays most Americans have dinner with their families. The traditional dinner is turkey and pumpkin pie.
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