-
外国语学院
商务英语
1101
袁小丽
2011012406
British
Traditional Festivals
1. Halloween
1.1 History of Halloween
Halloween is a holiday celebrated on
the night of October 31. The word Halloween is
a shortening of All Hallows' Evening
also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve.
Traditional activities include trick-
or-treating, bonfires, and costume parties,
visiting
versions of the
tradition to North America in the nineteenth
century. Other western
countries
embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century
including Ireland, the
United States,
Canada, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom. Trick-
or-treating, is an
activity for
children on or around Halloween in which they
proceed from house to
house in
costumes, asking for treats such as confectionery
with the question,
treat?
or
his property if no treat is given. Trick-or-
treating is one of the main traditions of
Halloween. It has become socially
expected that if one lives in a neighborhood with
children one should purchase treats in
preparation for trick-or-treaters. The history of
Halloween has evolved. The activity is
popular in the United States, the United
Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and due to
increased American cultural influence in recent
years, imported through exposure to US
television and other media, trick-or-treating
has started to occur among children in
many parts of Europe, and in the Saudi Aramco
camps of Dhahran, Akaria compounds and
Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia. The most
significant growth and resistance is in
the United Kingdom, where the police have
threatened to prosecute parents who
allow their children to carry out the
element. In continental Europe, where
the commerce-driven importation of
Halloween is seen with more skepticism,
numerous destructive or illegal
police
warnings have further raised suspicion about this
game and Halloween in
general. In Ohio,
Iowa, and Massachusetts, the night designated for
Trick-or-treating
is often referred to
as Beggars Night.
1.2 Halloween Superstitions
(
迷信
)
Halloween has always been a holiday
filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It
began as a Celtic end-of-summer
festival during which people felt especially close
to
deceased relatives and friends. For
these friendly spirits, they set places at the
dinner
table, left treats on doorsteps
and along the side of the road and lit candles to
help
loved ones find their way back to
the spirit world. Today's Halloween ghosts are
often
depicted as more fearsome and
malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are
scarier too. We avoid crossing paths
with black cats, afraid that they might bring us
bad luck. This idea has its roots in
the Middle Ages, when many people believed that
witches avoided detection by turning
themselves into cats. We try not to walk under
ladders for the same reason. This
superstition may have come from the ancient
Egyptians, who believed that triangles
were sacred; it also may have something to do
with the fact that walking under a
leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe. And
around
Halloween, especially, we try to
avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the
road or spilling salt.
1.3 How they celebrate the
Halloween?
The practice of dressing up
in costumes and begging door to door for treats on
holidays goes back to the Middle Ages,
and includes Christmas wassailing.
Trick-or-treating resembles the late
medieval practice of
would go door to
door on Hallowmas, receiving food in return for
prayers for the dead
on All Souls Day.
It originated in Ireland and Britain, although
similar practices for
the souls of the
dead were found as far south as Italy. Shakespeare
mentions the
practice in his comedy The
Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses
his
master of
1.4 Symbols of
Halloween
Halloween originated as a
celebration connected with evil spirits. Witches
flying on
broomsticks
with
black
cats,
ghosts,
goblins
and
skeletons
have
all
evolved
as
symbols of Halloween.
They are popular trick-or-treat costumes and
decorations for
greeting
cards
and
windows.
Black
is
one
of
the
traditional
Halloween
colors,
probably because
Halloween festivals and traditions took place at
night. In the weeks
before
October
31,
Americans
decorate
windows
of
houses
and
schools
with
silhouettes of witches and black cats.
Pumpkins are also a symbol of Halloween. The
pumpkin
is
an
orange-colored
squash,
and
orange
has
become
the
other
traditional
Halloween color.
Carving pumpkins into jack- o'lanterns is a
Halloween custom also
dating back to
Ireland. A legend grew up about a man named Jack
who was so stingy
that
he
was
not
allowed
into
heaven
when
he
died,
because
he
was
a
miser.
He
couldn't enter hell either because he
had played jokes on the devil. As a result, Jack
had to
walk
the
earth with
his
lantern until
Judgment
Day. The
Irish people carved
scary
faces
out
of
turnips,
beets
or
potatoes
representing
of
the
Lantern,
or
Jack-o'lantern. When the Irish brought
their customs to the United States, they carved
faces
on
pumpkins
because
in
the
autumn
they
were
more
plentiful
than
turnips.
Today jack-o'-lanterns in the windows
of a house on Halloween night
let
costumed
children know that
there are goodies waiting if they knock and say
1.5 short stories about Halloween
Scary Stories
No
Halloween
party
is
complete
without
at
least
one
scary
story.
Usually
one
person talks in a low voice while
everyone else crowds together on the floor or
around
a fire. The following is a
retelling of a tale told in Britain and in North
Carolina and
Virginia.
1.5.1
There was an old woman who
lived all by herself, and she was very lonely.
Sitting in
the kitchen one night, she
said,
spoken than down the chimney
tumbled two feet from which the flesh had rotted.
The