Hallowe'en

OCTOBER 31 - HALLOWE'EN. It is not a legal or a national holiday. Schools, offices and banks do not close. Hallowe'en is the day or evening before Alhallow's or All Saints' Day. Many Hallowe'en stones and games are hundreds of years old. Hallowe' en customs date back to a time when people believed in devils and witches and ghosts.

They thought that these evil spirits could do all kinds of damage to property. Some people tried to scare witches away by painting magic signs on their barns. Others tried to scare them away by nailing a piece of iron, such as a horseshoe, over the door.

It is a holiday for children and young people. In the evening of October 31 they dress up in different old clothes and wear masks. They cut horrible faces in empty pumpkins (тыква) and put a lighted candle inside. The children go from house to house and knock on the doors, calling “trick or treat”. This means that if you give them a “treat” — sweets, cakes, fruits or anything else they like — they go away without “trick”. If you don't, they play a trick on you. The most common tricks are making a lot of noise or soaping the windows of houses and cars. They draw pictures on the windows with soap.

Text. 4 recreation

•

Baseball, basketball, American football, and ice hockey are the most popular spectator and participation sports, but Americans enjoy an enormous range of activities, including soccer, cycling, racket-ball (a hybrid of squash and handball), tennis, swimming, skin-diving, golf, bowling, martial arts, walking, jogging, and aerobic exercise.

Schools, cities, and other organizations sponsor team sports for the young, and professional sports are an important part of the culture.

Sports and games in the United States take two forms: amateur and professional. Professional sport is big business. The players and athletes are paid much money, and they are bought and sold between clubs.

BASEBALL is the most popular summer sport in the United States. It is played by schools, colleges and professional teams. Baseball is a game between two teams and is played on a field with a bat and a small white ball. Each team consists of nine players. The first American baseball match was in 1839 in New York, but some people think that baseball comes from a much older game called “rounders”, played in Europe for many years.

SOFTBALL is very similar to baseball, but is played with a larger ball. Softball is a popular sport among American women and

coed (combined men and women) teams.

BASKETBALL is played on a court with a large orange ball. There are only five players on each team. The players try to shoot the ball into the basket, or hoop. As a rule, the players are very tall.

FOOTBALL is a field game between two teams of eleven players each. But American football rules differ from those of the ordinary football. The field looks different and Americans play with an oval-shaped ball. The players can run with the ball, touch and push each other. So the players are often hurt in American football. The teams wear special clothes and helmets as in hockey because the game can be dangerous.

SOCCER is the American name for the ordinary European football. It is one of the most popular international sports in the United States as well as tennis, wrestling, boxing, horse-racing and others.

In general, most Americans spend a large amount of their leisure time socializing or watching television. Other leisure activities include going to the cinema or concerts, picnicking, and travelling. Many Americans enjoy volunteering for a wide range of causes, from raising funds to help those who are less fortunate to tutoring students or leading Scout troops and youth sports. Even city dwellers enjoy spending time in the “great outdoors”, camping, hiking, or hunting.