Customs of Great Britain
The customs
and traditions of Great Britain are especially interesting and in this project
we will focus on the celebration of Christmas, the Easter, Halloween and Guy
Fawkes Night in Great Britain.
Christmas
Christmas
Eve is the last day for many people to shop and prepare festive meals. The
shops, especially those that sell food and gifts, are usually very busy. Some
families decorate their houses with Christmas ornaments such as Christmas
trees, small coloured lights, leaves and fruit as well as mistletoe.
The Christmas tree plays a major role in
Christmas decoration in every home in Great Britain. However, British people
also use a mixture of greenery and mistletoe plant which is called the “Yule log”,
“Yule Block” or “Christmas log” and it is traditionally burnt in the hearth
together with a remnant from
the log that had been burnt in the previous year’s festivities. The log’s role
was primarily that of bringing prosperity and protection from evil and by
keeping the remnant of the log all the year long the protection was said to
remain across the year. Also, pastries in the shape of “Yule log” are very
popular in Britain, today.
The “Boar’s Head Feast” is probably
the longest running tradition of the Christmas season. Its roots originate in
the ancient times when the wild boar was the king of the forest and a terrible
threat to people. In addition, children in the UK do not mail their letters to
Father Christmas but they throw them into the fireplace so that they wish will
travel to the North Pole.
Easter
The word Easter is said to derive from the Anglo-Saxon godess of dawn and
spring which was called Eostre. Today, Easter Sunday in Great Britain (as in so
many other places all around the world) is the celebration of Jesus Christ’s
Resurrection from the dead and it is one of the biggest Christian celebrations
of the year. In Great Britain, on Easter Sunday people decorate eggs and
exchange presents with each other instead of putting a lamb or kid on the
skewer as we do in Greece.
A lot of children believe that the Easter bunny comes to their home and
hides some Easter eggs in their garden and in Easter Sunday morning they go out
in the garden and search for them. Also, in the old times, Easter was a
traditional day for weddings, in which people were dressed up for Easter. Women
were wearing special Easter covers decorated with flowers and ribbons.
Halloween
Halloween is one of the well-known celebrations of the western world and it
is celebrated on the 31st of October. This celebration can be
considered as analogous to Greek “Apokries,” although there are many striking
differences between the two celebrations. They both originate in ancient years
when evil spirits of darkness should be driven away with noise and fire, but Halloween
is more mysterious and mystical. During this celebration, children of all age
groups are being disguised in something frightening and they move from house to
house gathering sweets and asking the owners of the house the question: “Trick
or Treat?”
Guy Fawkes Night
“Guy Fawkes Night” or “Bonfire Night” is celebrated on the 5th
of November. Guy Fawkes was an English soldier, member of a Catholic
conspirator’s team who organized the Gunpowder Plot (Gunpowder Conspiracy) on
the 5th of November 1605. Fawkes together with other five men
planned to assassinate King James I and restore a
Catholic monarch to the throne, by placing explosives and gunpowder under the
House of Lords in London. However, their conspiracy was revealed before the
completion of Guy Fawkes’ plan, and himself together with his co-conspirators
were interrogated, tortured and in the end executed for high treason.
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