Marta Zapała-Kraj 
Anglo-Saxon festivals, traditions, and celebrations in America and Britain 

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Sociology – Culture, Technology, Nations, grade: 5.0, , language: English, abstract: The paper is supposed to provide a truly comprehensive annotated reference work giving information on national festivals and holidays, with descriptive entries covering religious, cultural, ethnic, historical, popular, and sports celebrations from Britain and America, with sections on calendar systems, and tables of state and national public holidays.

The range of festivals and secular holidays in the various countries of the world is now vast. In modern times the proliferation of national and local events has also resulted in scores of special group days, and even whimsical and bizarre observances, ranging from very unique celebration of All Saints Day both in Poland and Ireland, to the Rat’s Wedding Day in China. Nevertheless, this thesis focuses on the Anglo-Saxon festivals, traditions and holidays as celebrated in America and Britain.

The celebration of special days and seasons, both religious and secular, is universal. From primitive times onward, special rites and festivals marked the religious mysteries of existence – the miracle of birth, life, death, and rebirth in the environment and in individual human experience. Such celebrations fulfilled a deep-seated longing in the human psyche, evoking profound emotions associated with the changing pattern of the year, the expecting of spring, the joys of summer, the harvest, the decline of the year through fall to the rigors of winter, and the promise of a new spring coming. Inevitably such celebrations involved a measurement of time, so that seasonal festivals could take place at appropriate dates in the cycle of the year.