Bank holidays! We all love them!

A bank holiday is an English term for a public holiday. During the day banks and offices are closed and a lot of people have a day off work. In the UK, people only get eight bank holidays in one year. 【小题1】

People in Colombia are much luckier. There are twenty bank holidays for the whole country in one year! And there can be even more, depending on which region(地区) you live in. 【小题2】 As in the UK, most of the bank holidays in Colombia exist for religious reasons.

【小题3】 One such example is Independence Day on 20 July every year. This is just like Bastille Day in France on 14 July. 【小题4】 It is in memory of the day that Christopher Columbus, first reached America in the year 1492.

Bank holidays are very important for western people. 【小题5】 They may also choose to stay at home to relax and forget about work.

Born in 1873 in an old town, the Carival of Viareggio now is one of the most popular events held in Vareggio, Italy. Some of the biggest carnival floats (彩车) in Viareggio are known to the whole world, turning into a kind of symbol (象征) showing peace, unity and love.

The Location And Transportation

The huge street parades (游行) take place on the seaside walkway of Vareggio. To get to Viareggio before the parades, visitors can easily arrive here by direct trains from Florence, Pisa, Lucca and Cinque Terre. The train station is only 10-15 minutes walk from the seaside walkway.

The 2024 Time Plan Of The Carnival

2023 was special because it was the 150th birthday of the Carnival of Viareggio. All stories and cultures of the carnival come from different corners of the world. This is why people call it “a common carnival”. Only a few days after the end of the 2023 carnival, its organization already worked out the dates of the 2024 carnival’s parades, The following is the schedule of the 2024 carnival’s parades.

The winners will be showed and there will be fireworks at the end of the parades.

Fall is a time for harvest. During this season, many countries have their own festivals to celebrate a harvest. Here’s a look at some of them.

China

In 2018, the Farmers’ Harvest Festival was launched in China. It’s held on the day of the autumn equinox (秋分). Every year, a range of events are organized nationwide especially for farmers and rural affairs’ workers to celebrate the harvest festival. Take this year’s festival for example. In Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, farmers brought 100 seed species to the main site of the ceremony in Hanhu district and placed them in a wall to mark the achievements of the seed industry. In Heilongjiang Province, the festival was combined with local traditions of the Daur people and the locals danced around bonfires (篝火).   

Canada

In Canada, people celebrate their harvest on Thanksgiving Day. The tradition dates back to the 16th century, when the English explorer Martin Frobisher (1535-1594) came upon the land which is now Canada while searching for the “New World”. As he arrived in Canada, he celebrated surviving the long journey.

Today, it has become a recognized holiday in the country that falls on the second Monday in October. Its date has moved around several times, but in 1957, the government decided to set the date in line with (与……一致) the completion of the Canadian harvest.

African countries

In Ghana and Nigeria, people have the Yam (山药) Festival to celebrate the most common food in many African countries. The Yam Festival is usually held at the beginning of August at the end of the rainy season. People celebrate the harvest with days of ceremonies and offerings of yams to their ancestors and to the gods.