Festivals and Celebrations

Frank and Beth are having an evening out in order to ......... Beth's 35th birthday.

The Olympics ........ every four years.

Mark ....... me of my father.

Carry .......... your work while I answer the phone call.

Monks will carry ......... their plan of traditional decoration of the statue if the weather is calm.

Rio Carnival isn't cheap to take part in, most people can't ....... to have such magnificent costumes.

At midday they carry the statue and the snakes in a ............... through the village. At the front of the .............. is a band playing music and at the back are women in costume who give sweets and bread shaped like snakes to the people who are watching. At the end of the ................... there are fireworks.

The islanders make three 20-metre high bamboo towers and cover these with buns. At midnight on the last day people light fires and then climb the towers to get the buns. ............ is free of charge for visitors and tourist.

In another village there is a ‘Cheese Rolling’ .............. . Everyone goes to the top of a very steep hill. A big round cheese is rolled down the hill and everyone tries to chase it. The winner gets free cheese for twenty years!

Pumpkins

The Celts .......... faces into vegetables like turnips, potatoes and squash (a pumpkin is a kind of squash) to scare the ghosts and other spirits and make them go away. It was sometimes called a jack-o’-lantern because of an Irish story about a man, Jack. He played a trick on the devil and then had to walk the earth for all time as a punishment. Irish people who came to live in the United States in the 1800s found pumpkins much easier to ............, and the tradition became the one we see today. 

The next day is called Rangwali Holi. In the morning everyone goes into the streets and people ......... coloured powders and water at each other. Some people use water guns and water balloons. After a few hours everyone is soaking wet and covered in a rainbow of different ........ 

Pancake Day is actually another name for Shrove Tuesday, which takes place 40 days before Easter Sunday and marks the start of Lent. In some other countries this day is called Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, because it's when all the good things are ............ for the last time before starting 40 days of religious fasting for Lent. Milk, eggs and oil or butter might not seem special nowadays, but hundreds of years ago they were one of the few ways of turning a basic recipe of flour and water into something richer.