American holidays

There are a lot of holidays in America: Thanksgiving Day, which is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November is one of the oldest public holidays; Mother’s Day, which is celebrated on the second Sunday of May, Mother’s Day is a day when children honour their mothers; the third Sunday in June is called Father’s Day, when children congratulate their fathers.

I have also to say that Americans celebrate holidays which are observed in many countries of the world. Among these are Christmas, which is celebrated on December 25, New Year’s Day, January 1, and Easter, which always falls on Sunday.

But there is one peculiar holiday, which isn’t celebrated in our republic – Presidents’ Day. Presidents’ Day is an old national holiday. For a long time it was observed on February 22, the birthday of George Washington, first president of the USA. In the majority of states Americans also celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on February 12. In the 1970s the American Congress decided to honour all past presidents of a country on a single day which was called Presidents’ Day, and which is observed on the third Monday in February every year, when the Americans honour the dead. They remember the dead of all wars and all other dead. Special ceremonies are held in cemeteries, at monuments for the war dead, in churches, schools, or other public places. 

Christmas is a very great religious holiday. Today there are a lot of Christmas traditions which are very popular, for example, to give presents to the children with the help of Santa Claus, who is said to live at the North Pole, where he makes toys for children during the whole year. Grown-ups also exchange presents and Christmas greeting cards. Americans decorate their homes for Christmas. They have a Christmas tree, which they decorate with toys and small lights. The tree may be a real fir tree from the forest or an artificial one.

Christmas is also a time when Americans do a lot of charity work. They help the people, organize Christmas dinners for the homeless people. During Christmas you can meet a lot of people in the streets who collect money for those who are in need.

There are a lot of other holidays: Independence Day, Labour Day, Columbus Day, Veterans’ Day, Martin Luter King’s Day, etc.

But I think that Halloween is the most unusual among them. Halloween is a festival that takes place on October 31. In the USA children wear costumes and masks and go trick-or-treating. Many of them carve jack-o’-lanterns out of pumpkins. Fortunetelling and storytelling about ghosts and witches is popular activity that day.

Halloween developed from New Year festivals and festivals of the dead. Christian church established a festival on November 1 called All Saint’s Day so that people could continue to celebrate their festivals.

Jack-o’-lanterns are hollowed-out pumpkins with face carved into one side. Most jack-o’-lanterns contain a candle inside. An Irish legend says that jack-o’-lanterns are named after the man called Jack. He could not enter heaven because he was a miser, and he could not enter hell because he had played jokes on devil. As a result, Jack has to walk on the earth with his Lantern until Judgment Day.

Fortunetelling is an important part of Halloween. For example, a coin, a ring, and a thimble were baked into a cake. It was believed that the person who found the coin would become wealthy. The one who found the ring would marry soon. And the person who found the thimble would never get married. Today people practice card reading and palmistry.

People once believed that there were many ghosts and witches on the Earth and that they met on October 31 to worship the devil. Today, people don’t believe in ghosts and withes but they like to tell stories about them on Halloween.

And in the end it’s necessary to say that Americans as all other nations have their own peculiar holidays that deserve our attention.