Holidays in great britain

HOLIDAYS IN GREAT BRITAIN
The British love and honor their holidays and traditions: they took shape over the centuries and included pagan and Christian rituals, official state dates, musical and sporting events. Today, cultural symbols and traditional rites are borrowed and mixed, but for Britain with its multicultural population, the history of the mutual influence of the colonies and colonialists, attention to their own ancient pre-Christian culture, the diversity of traditions has always been characteristic. For foreign tourists, students and expats, some holidays will be familiar - for example, international Valentine's Day and Halloween - and others, like Queen's Birthday or Guy Fawkes Day, will be an interesting discovery. Not all English holidays are accompanied by weekends, but certainly everyone has their own history, symbolism and rituals.
Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day is celebrated in many countries of the world - it is a holiday of romantics and lovers, sellers of cards and plush toys. The history of secret weddings in the circle of Jeffrey Chaucer in the Middle Ages, in the era of courtly love, is associated with the name of the priest Valentine. In 18th-century England , the tradition of celebrating Valentine's Day became entrenched and took on stable forms: lovers confess their love, give flowers, sweets and Valentine greeting cards, originally handmade. The symbols of Valentine's Day today are the heart, pigeons and the figure of a winged cupid.

Maslenitsa
Pancake week, or Pancake week Tuesday - Tuesday in the week before Lent, the traditional Christian custom of abstaining from animal food for 40 days before Easter. Fasting ends on Easter Sunday. Today, few Christians fast, but the tradition of baking pancakes on the eve of fasting, using all the eggs, milk and butter remaining in the house, has been preserved, although it has lost its original meaning. Researchers of pagan traditions say that pancakes symbolized the sun, and Pancake Week was a holiday of seeing off winter, when festivals and fist fights were held in the villages. Today, for many people, this is an occasion to get together and eat a traditional dish with various additives.
Mothers Day
Mother's Day is a holiday of mothers and grandmothers, a day of gratitude for everything that they did and are doing. Traditionally, children of all ages give gifts and postcards to their mothers, invite them to a cafe or do household chores for them, some mothers even get breakfast in bed. Initially, the custom of honoring mothers on the fourth Sunday of Lent was religious, but by the first third of the 20th century. the holiday became popular among all residents of Britain.