The Annual Holidays In Great Britain.

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Why have we chosen this theme? Just like families have their own traditions so do the countries. It’s common knowledge that the British are lovers of traditions. A whole year, each season is connected with various colourful traditions, customs and festivals and unusual funny competitions. They ‘re known all over the world now, thanks the Internet. English are proud of their traditions and carefully keep them up even the smallest ones. These holidays are annual from our point of view, but they are famous and involve months of careful planning and preparations of costumes, machines, choreography and special dishes. Others require simply a worrying desire to make a complete and utter fool of oneself. It's very important to know traditions and customs of other countries. It helps to know more about the history and line of different nations. We have already reported about public traditional holidays, so we are going deeper now to wide our opinions about English speaking countries.

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The Annual Holidays Have Much in Common. Every town, village and hamlet has its own traditions, and they are centuries old. They are closely connected with the culture of English, Walsh, Irish and Scots.

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The Summer Solstice On Stonehenge Stonehenge is perhaps the most famous of the ancient astronomical monuments found around the world. If you stood inside the Stonehenge monument on the day of the northern summer solstice, facing north-east through the entrance towards a rough hewn stone outside the circle – known as the Heel Stone. So you would see the sun rise above the Heel Stone.

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Boxing day. Boxing Day comes on the 26-th of December. It is a day of sport, including horse racing, fox hunting, and rugby. Boxing Day was traditionally the day on which householders gave presents or Christmas boxes to servants and trades people. It is now simply a leisure day, a day for relaxing and visiting friends.

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The Bognor Birdman Competition Do you have a homemade wings? And you have been dreaming to fly? Then this holiday is for you. Scattered on a wide platform built over the water, and fly forward and down. The main thing is to fly as far as possible.

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The Bognor Birdman Competition takes place in May. Competitors build strange homemade flying machines or wear unusual costumes and try to fly off the pier. The person who flies the furthest wins a large cash prize (about 30,000 $). As many as 40,000 spectators watch the competition every year. Sometimes it’s dangerous because the fliers crash. But it goes ahead despite health and safety fears .

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The Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling Competition is held in every year in May. Contestants stand at the top of a very steep hill. A huge cheese is rolled down, and the contestants have to chase it down the hill. Nobody ever manages to catch the cheese, but the person who gets to the bottom first is the winner, and keeps the cheese as a prize!

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Up-Helly-Aa . Today, the Scots are proud of th e history and relationship with the famous Scandinavian pirates.

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Up – Helly – Aa Festival is held every year on the last Tuesday of January in the Shetland Isles. Up to 1000 people dressed as Vikings and holding flaming torches pull a Viking Galley through the streets When they reach the certain place, they throw their torches into the galley and burn it. Then they perform short funny plays in local halls.

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Hammer throwing competition King Edward I of England prohibited Scotsmen to use weapons. That’s why Scots turned to alternative methods of training like many Highland games events in the early 14th century. They have kept these traditions till our days.

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Conclusions. Besides public holidays there are some special festivals and holidays-competitions in Great Britain. They are very popular because are closely connected with the historical traditions of four nationalities of Great Britain. They have much in common. The holidays evolve various competitions, and many local inhabitants take part in them. The winners take prizes, which are over 30,000 pounds. Due to the Internet these holidays became very popular all over the world, and even you can take part in them.