Traditions and holidays of Great Britain - Реферат

In summer and winter tourists stand outside the palace at 11:30 every morning and watch the Changing of the Guard. Traditionally the Queen opens Parliament every autumn. But Parliament, not the Royal Family, controls modern Britain. The Queen travels from Buckingham Palace to the Houses of Parliament in a gold carriage - the Irish State Coach. At the Houses of Parliament the Queen sits on a “throne” in the House of Lords. Then she reads the “Queen’s Speech”. At the State Opening of Parliament the Queen wears a crown. She wears other jewels from the Crown Jewels, too. Every year, there is a new Lord Mayor of London. The Mayor is the city’s traditional leader. And the second Saturday in November is always the day for the Lord Mayor’s Show. This ceremony is over six hundred years old. It is also London’s biggest parade. The Lord Mayor drives to the Royal Courts of Justice in a coach. The coach is two hundred years old. It is red and gold and it has six horses. As it is also a big parade, people make special costumes and act stories from London’s history. In Britain as in other countries costumes and uniforms have a long history. One is the uniform of the Beefeaters at the tower of London. This came first from France. Another is the uniform of the Horse Guards at Horse Guard’s Parade, not far from Buckingham Palace. Thousands of visitors take photographs of the Horse Guards. Britannia is a symbol of Britain. And she wears traditional clothes, too. But she is not a real person. Lots of ordinary clothes have a long tradition. The famous bowler hat, for example. A man called Beaulieu made the first one in 1850. One of the British soldiers, Wellington, gave his name to a pair of boots. They have a shorter name today - “Wellies”. There is a very special royal tradition. On the River Thames there are hundreds of swans. A lot of these beautiful white birds belong, traditionally, to the king or queen. In July the young swans on the Thames are about two months old. Then the Queen’s swan keeper goes, in a boat, from London Bridge to Henley. He looks at all the young swans and marks the royal ones. The name of this strange nut interesting custom is Swan Upping. There are only six public holidays a year in Great Britain, that is days on which people need not go in to work. They are: Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Spring Bank Holiday and Late Summer Bank Holiday, Boxing Day. So the most popular holiday in Britain is Christmas. Christmas has been celebrated from the earliest days of recorded history, and each era and race has pasted a colourful sheet of new customs and traditions over the old. On the Sunday before Christmas many churches hold a carol service where special hymns are sung. Sometimes carol singers can be heard in the streets as they collect money for charity. There are a lot of very popular British Christmas carols. Three famous ones are: “Good King Wenceslas”, “The Holly and The Ivy” and “We Three Kings”. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world send and receive Christmas cards. Most of people think that exchanging cards at Christmas is a very ancient custom but it is not right. In fact it is barely 100 years old. The idea of exchanging illustrated greeting and presents is, however, ancient. So the first commercial Christmas card was produced in Britain in 1843 by Henry Cole, founder of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The handcoloured print was inscribed with the words ’A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year to you’. It was horizontally rectangular in shape, printed on stout cardboard by lithography. A traditional feature of Christmas in Britain is the Christmas tree. Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, brought the German tradition (he was German) to Britain.