Halloween
31st October - It's the day before All Saints' Day. The festival started in pre-Christian times. People believed that at Halloween the souls of the dead revisit the places where they once lived.
Children prepare their costumes and pumpkins. Normally the costumes depict witches, fairies, devils, monsters and other scary beings. Pumpkins are hallowed out and a face is cut into the pumpkins skin. Inside a candle is placed the iight of which shines out through the face. Such a pumpkin is called a Jack - 0 - Lantern. Children go ,,trick or treating" in their costumes. This is when they go from house to house performing a little song or rhyme for sweets.


Thanksgiving Day
In September 1620 a group of English people called the Pilgrim Fathers sailed from Plymouth, England across the Atlantic Ocean, in a ship called The Mayflower, to America. They went away from England because of their religion, and because they wanted land for their families. The pilgrims sailed- for sixty six dangerous days -across the Atlantic Ocean,
When they arrived, they called their new home New England, but they were not the first people to live there. The Indians were first. Sometimes the Pilgrims fought with the Indians but they also learned a lot from them. The Indians showed them how to grow and cook new kinds of fruit and vegetables. The first winter was difficult. Many of the Pilgrims died because it was very cold and they had little food. In the spring they started to grow food, helped by some friendly Indians, and in the autumn of 1621 they celebrated their first harvest.
The pilgrims wanted to give thanks, not only for the harvest, but for their new home, new life and new friends. The date of Thanksgiving Day in the USA has changed three times, but it is now the fourth Thursday in November. Most Americans have dinner with their families. The traditional dinner is turkey and pumpkin pie.


Guy Fawkes Night
5th November- It's Guy Fawkes Night (Bonfire Night). In 1605 King James I. was on the throne. As a Protestant, he was very unpopular with Roman Catholic. Some of them planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament on 5th November of that year when the king was going to open Parliament. Under the House of Lords they had stored thirty - six barrels of gun powder which were to be exploded by a man called Guy Fawkes. However one of the plotters told someone and Fawkes was discovered, arrested and later hanged.