Customs and traditions of Great Britain

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We'll take a cup of kindness yet,

For auld lang syne!..

New Year's Eve is a more important festival in Scotland than it is in
England, and it even has a special name. It is not clear where the word
'Hogmanay' comes from, but it is connected with the provision of food and drink for all visitors to your home on 31th December. It was believed that the first person to visit one's house on New Year's Day could bring good or bad luck. Therefore, people tried to arrange for the person or their own choice to be standing outside their houses ready to be let in the moment midnight had come. Usually a dark-complexioned man was chosen, and never a woman, for she would bring bad luck. The first footer was required to carry three articles: a piece of coal to wish warmth, a piece of bread to wish food, and a silver coin to wish wealth.

Easter.

Easter is a Christian spring festival that is usually celebrated in
March or April. The name for Easter comes from a pagan fertility celebration. The word "Easter" is named after Eastre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess og spring. Spring is a natural time for new life and hope when animals have their young and plants begin to grow. Christian Easter may have purposely been celebrated in the place of a pagan festival. It is therefore not surprising that relics of doing and beliefs not belonging th the Christian religious should cling even to this greatest day in the
Church's year. An old-fashioned custom still alive is to get up early and climb a hill to see the sun rising. There are numerous accounts of the wonderful spectacle of the sun whirling round and round for joy at our
Saviour's Resurrection. So many people go outdoors on Easter morning hoping to see the sun dance. There is also a custom of putting on something new to go to church on Easter morning. People celebrate the holiday according to their beliefs and their religious denominations. Christians commemorate
Good Friday as the day that Christ died and Easter Sunday as the day that
He was resurrected. Protestant settlers brought the custom of a sunrise service, a religious gathering at dawn, to the United States.

Today on Easter Sunday, children wake up to find that the Easter
Bunny has left them baskets of candy. He has also hidden the eggs that they decorated earlier that week. Children hunt for the eggs all around the house. Neighborhoods and organizations hold Easter egg hunts, and the child who first the most eggs wins a prize.

Americans celebrate the Easter bunny coming. They set out easter baskets for their children to anticipate the easter bunnys arrival whi leaves candy and other stuff. The Easter Bunny is a rabbit-spirit. Long ago, he was called the "Easter Hare". Hares and rabbits have frequent multiple births, so they became a symbol of fertility.

Christians fast during the forty days before Easter. They choose to eat and drink only enough to feep themselves alive.

The day preceding Lent is known as Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day.
Shrove Tuesday recalls the day when people went to Church ti confess and be shriven before Lent. But now the day is more generally connected with relics of the traditional feasting before the fast. Shrove Tuesday is famous for pancake calebration. There is some competition at Westminster
School: the pancakes are tossed over a bar by the cook and struggled for by a small group of selected boys. The boy who manages to get the largest piece is given a present. This tradition dates from 1445. In the morning the first church bell on Orley is rung for the competitors to make pancakes. The second ring is a signal for cooking them. The third bell set rung for the copetitors to gather at the market square. Then the Pancake bell is sounded and the ladies set off from the church porch, tossing their pancakes three times as they run. Each woman must wear an apron and a hat or scarf over her head. The winner is given a Prayer Book dy the Vicar.

Mothering Sunday is the fourth Sunday in Lent. It is customary to vasit one's mother on that day. Mother ought to be given a present - tea, flowers or a simnel cake. It is possible to buy the cake, they are sold in every confectionery. But it is preferrable to make it at home. The way
Mothering Sunday is celebrated has much in common with the International
Women's Day celebration in Russia.

Good Friday is the first Friday before Easter. It is the day when all sorts of taboos on various works are in force. Also it is a good day for shifting beers, for sowing potatoes, peas, beans, parsley, and pruning rose trees. Good Friday brings the once sacred cakes, the famous Hot Cross buns.
These must be spiced and the dough marked with a cross before baking.

Eggs, chickens, rabbits and flowers are all symbols of new life.
Chocolate and fruit cake covered with marzipan show that fasting is over.
Wherever Easter is celebrated, there Easter eggs are usually to be found.
In England, just as in Russia, Easter is a time for giving and receiving of presents that traditionally take the form of an Easter egg. Easter egg is a real hard-boiled egg dyed in bright colors or decorated with some elaborate pattern. Coloring and decorating eggs for Easter is a very ancient custom.
Many people, however, avoid using artificial dyes and prefer to boil eggs with the outer skin of an onion, which makes the eggs shells yellow or brown. In fact, the color depends on the amount of onion skin added. In ancient times they used many different natural dyes fir the purpose. The dyes were obtained mainly from leaves, flowers and bark.

At present Easter eggs are also made of chocolate, sugar, metals, wood, ceramics and other materials at hand. They may differ in size, ranging from enormous to tiny, no bigger than a robin's egg. Easter Sunday is solemnly celebrated in London. Each year the capital city of Britain greets the spring with a spectacular Easter Parade in Battersea Park. The great procession, or parade, begins at 3 p.m. The parade consists of many decorated floats, entered by various organizations in and outside London.
Some of the finest bands in the country take part in the parade. At the rear of the parade is usually the very beautiful float richly decorated with flowers. It is called the Jersey one because the spring flowers bloom early on the Island of Jersey.

In England, children rolled eggs down hills on Easter morning, a game has been connected to the rolling away of the rock from Jesus Christ's tomb then He was resurrected. British settlers brought this custom to the New
World. It consists of rolling coloured, hardboiled egg down a slope until they are cracked and broken after whish they are eaten by their owners. In some districts this is a competitive game, the winner being the player whose egg remains longest undamaged, but more usually, the fun consists simply of the rolling and eating.

Harvest

Corn Dollies

Many countries seem to have had a similar custom to the British one of making a design from the last sheaf of corn to be harvested. In Britain a corn dolly is created by plaiting the wheat stalks to create a straw figure. The corn dolly is kept until the Spring. This is because people believed that the corn spirit lived in the wheat and as the wheat was harvested, the spirit fled to the wheat which remained. By creating the corn dolly the spirit is kept alive for the next year and the new crop.
Sometimes the corn dolly is hung up in the barn, sometimes in the farmhouse, and sometimes in the church. In Spring the corn dolly would be ploughed back into the soil. There are many types of corn dolly.

The story of John Barleycorn

A story to the corn dolly is to be found in the folksong John
Barleycorn. Three men swear that John Barleycorn must die. They take a plough and bury him alive. But the Spring comes and John rises through the soil. After a while he grows big and strong, even growing a beard, so the three men cut him down at the knee, tie him on to a cart, beat him, strip the flesh off his bones and grind him between two stones. But at the end it is John Barleycorn who defeats his opponents, proving the stronger man, by turning into beer.

Harvest Festivals

In churches all over Britain there are services to thank God for the
Harvest. As part of these services local people bring baskets of fruit and vegetables to decorate the church. The produce is then distributed to the poor.

Halloween

The word itself, "Halloween," actually has its origins in the
Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve.
November 1, "All Hollows Day" (or "All Saints Day"), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic
Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called
Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year.

One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living.

Naturally, the still-living did not want to be possessed. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.