New Year Day and Happy Halloween! Unit 8

7.31.2008 | Etiquetas: , , , , , , , , , | |



New Year's Eve is on December 31, the final day of the Gregorian year, and the day before New Year's Day.

New Year's Eve is a separate observance from the observance of New Year's Day. In modern Western practice, New Year's Eve is celebrated with parties and social gatherings spanning the transition of the year at midnight.

Many cultures use fireworks and other forms of noise making in part of the celebration. Some of the cities most well-known for their celebrations include Sydney, Toronto, Moscow, Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, and New York City.

New Year's Eve is a public non-working Holiday in the following countries, among others: Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Greece and Venezuela.

In Venezuela, many of the traditions are very similar to the ones from Spain, with an over-emphasis in traditions who supposedly will bring good luck in the year forthcoming. Those who want to find love in the New Year are supposed to wear yellow underwear on New Year's Eve; those who want money must have a bill of high value when toast, those who want to travel must go out home while carrying some luggage, and so on.

Usually, people listen to radio specials, which give a countdown and announce the New Year according to the legal hour in Venezuela, and, in Caracas, following the twelve bells from the Cathedral of Caracas. During these special programs is a tradition to broadcast songs about the sadness on the end of the year, being popular favorites "Viejo año" ("Old year") by Gaita group Maracaibo 15 and "Cinco pa' las 12" ("Five minutes before twelve") who was versioned by several popular singers like Nestor Zavarce, Nancy Ramos and José Luis Rodríguez El puma. The unofficial hymn for the first minutes of the New Year is "Año Nuevo, Vida Nueva" ("New Year, New Life"), by the band Billo's Caracas Boys.


Halloween, Hallowe'en, or Holloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October, 31 Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, ghost tours, bonfires, costume parties, visiting "haunted houses", and carving Jack-o'-lanterns. Irish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century. Halloween is celebrated in several countries of the Western World, most commonly in Ireland, the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and occasionally in parts of Australia.

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