1. Major uk Bank holidays New Year’s Day

People welcome in the New Year on the night before. This is called New Year’s Eve. In Scotland, people celebrate with a lively festival calledHogmanay^**. All over Britain there are parties, fireworks, singing and dancing, to ring out the old year and ring in the new. As the clock –Big Ben– strikes midnight, people link arms and sing a song calledAuld Lang Syne^***. It reminds them of old and new friends.

Till recently it has not been customary to celebrate the New Year’s Day with fireworks (they were reserved for Bonfire Night). The year 2000 saw a large change: all across England peoplestartedsetting off fireworks on the stroke of midnight.

Major customs:

The Door Custom. In the old days, the New Year started with a custom called “first footing”, which was supposed to bring good luck to people for the coming year. As soon as midnight had passed and January 1^st had started, people used to wait behind their doors for a dark haired person to arrive. The visitor carried a piece of coal, some bread, some money and some greenery. These were all for good luck – the coal to make sure that the house would always be warm, the bread to make sure everyone in the house would have enough food to eat, money so that they would have enough money, and the greenery to make sure that they had a long life.

The visitor would then take a pan of dust or ashes out of the house with him, thus signifying the departure of the old year.

New Year Superstition. The 1^st of January was a highly significant day in medieval superstitions regarding prosperity, or lack of it, in the year ahead. A flat cake was put on one of the horns of a cow in every farmyard. The farmer and his workers would then sing a song and dance around the cow until the cake was thrown to the ground. If it fell in front of the cow that signified good luck; falling behind indicated the opposite.

May Day

The first day of the month of May is known as May Day (however, the Bank Holiday by that name is observed on the first Monday in May). It is the time of year when warmer weather begins and flowers and trees start to blossom. It is said to be a time of love and romance. It is when people celebrate the coming of summer with lots of different customs that are expressions of joy and hope after a long winter.

Although summer does not officially begin until June, May Day marks its beginning. May Day celebrations have their origins in the Roman festival of Flora, goddess of fruit and flowers, which marked the beginning of summer. It was held annually from April 28^th to May 3^rd. It is also associated with the Celtic holiday Beltane, a spring-time festival of optimism marking the beginning of the summer agricultural season.

Traditional English May Day celebrations include Morris dancing, crowning a May Queen and dancing around a Maypole.

Morris dancing. It is a traditional English form of folkdancing, performed by groups of men or women. The dancing is very lively and accompanied by an accordion player, a melodian or fiddle player (Cotswolds) or a noisy band with a drum (Border Morris or North West sides).

Morris dancers wear different clothes depending on the part of the country in which they dance. They are often dressed in white with coloured baldrics (coloured belts) across their chests.

Border Morris Dancers generally wear “tatter jackets”and black their faces – probably originating as a form of disguise.

Crowning a May Queen is one of the festivities of the May Day celebration. The May Queen isthe human replica of Flora. By traditionthe most buetiful girl in a village was chosen for this part, she took no part in the games or dancing, but sat like a queen in a flower-decked chair to watch her“subjects”.

Maypole Dancing is a traditional May Day dance. On May Day, people used to cut down young trees and stick them in the ground in the village to mark the arrival of summer. People danced around the tree poles in celebration of the end of winter and the start of the fine weather that would allow planting to begin.

Maypoles were once common all over England and were kept from one year to the next. It is usually a rather high pole with colourful ribbons attached to its top, while the other end of each ribbon is held by a dancer. As the music starts, the dancers would go around the pole, some one way and others another way, interweaving the ribbons as they go. Schools would practice skipping round the pole for weeks before the final show on the village greens. The end results would be either a beautiful plaited pattern of ribbons round the pole or a tangled cat’s cradle, depending on how much rehearsing had been done.