Celebrations in Great Britain

Celebrations in Great Britain

The goals of the project

• To surf the Internet, scientific literature and find information about Celebrations in Britain.
• To make a list of the most peculiar of the national British festivals and speak about it.

Our main goal is to learn more about national holidays in Britain and British culture

Royal Ascot

Royal Ascot is one of the greatest horse-race meetings in Britain. The origin of the Royal Ascot dates back to 1711 when the Royal Family first attended a horse and carriage racing event and it has a long history. It is held at Ascot at the South of England. The Queen drives there from Windsor Castle. The event lasts for 4 days and men and women try on their bests hats for this occasion.

Boxing Day

Boxing Day is called so because it’s a time when trades people receive a ‘Christmas Box’ - some money in appreciation of the work. This money was called their Christmas Box - hence the name.

Boxing Day is still part of Christmas and many people now use this day as an opportunity to visit the other half of the family.

Boxing Day is a popular day for football matches, polo and other sporting plays. The day is a public holiday, so shops and banks are closed.

Pancake Day

Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday, is the day before Lent starts. Lent is a Christmas fast which lasts 40 days before Easter. Pancake Day is traditionally a day of celebration, the last day that you can eat what you want until Easter. Pancakes are made of flour, eggs and milk: all things which shouldn’t be eaten during Lent. Nowadays people don’t fast, but some people give up sweets or smoking.

This is a pancake race. Each competitor carries a pancake in a frying pan. While running they have to throw the pancake in the air and catch it again in the pan. The competitors are usually women.

April Fool’s Day

April Fool's Day is a holiday where people play pranks on each other all across the world, and has been celebrated since the Roman times.

While you might be switching the salt and the sugar, or putting a plastic spider in someone's tea, there have been some truly incredible pranks that fooled the entire world.

During an interview on BBC Radio 2, on the morning of 1 April 1976, the astronomer Patrick Moore announced that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to take place. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would reduce the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at that very moment, they would experience a strange floating sensation.

The BBC received hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported she and her 11 friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.

Chelsea Flower Show

Chelsea flower Show is the most important British flower and garden show. Formally known as the  Great Spring Show, it  is a garden show held for five days in May. Held at Chelsea since 1912, it is the most famous flower and landscape gardens show in the United Kingdom, and perhaps in the world,  attracting visitors from all continents. Thousands of people come to see prize flowers and specially built gardens.

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