The word “Holiday” comes from the word “holy day”. Holidays were first religious festivals. Now many holidays have nothing to do with religion. Every country has holidays honoring important events in its history. Every year starts with New Year. It’s a very great holiday, when everybody make wishes for a new year; make the new hope to the future. It’s everybody’s favorite holiday. People get a lot of presents, greetings. March the 8th is a Women’s Day. This date was introduced in 1910 by the 2nd International Conference of women-socialists. Nowadays this holiday has lost its political meaning and become just a day when we give presents, flowers, words of gratitude to our mothers, grandmothers, teachers. On March 9th we celebrate the birthday of great Ukrainian poet, writer, artist Taras Shevchenko. Finally his dreams have come true, the Ukraine has become independent. Easter Day comes to the lunar calendar. The day we celebrate Christ’s rising from death. The holidays comes on Sunday. On May the 9th we celebrate the anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany. On that day people express their thankfulness to veterans of the World War II.
On August, the 24th, Ukrainian independence was proclaimed and new era in Ukrainian history began.
Active Words and Word Combinations:
memorable – пам‘ятний
Easter — Великдень
Resurrection — воскресіння
adult — дорослий
baptizing – хрещення
Questions:
1. What memorable dates in the history of Ukraine are known to you?
2. Are there any holidays of religious origin?
3. Describe the New Year’s Eve celebration?
4. When did our people begin to celebrate Easter and Christmas?