Ejercicios Lectura En Ingles

HOLIDAYS IN THE U.S.A.


The most significant legal holiday celebrated in the United States of America is the Fourth of July. This date marks the act by which the thirteen original Colonies broke their allegiance to the Crown of England, and declared themselves to be “The United States of America” with the right to independent self-government. On July 2, 1776, The Colonial Congress adoptedand voted upon the Resolution of Independence, and on July 4, two days later, the ‘Declaration’ written by Thomas Jefferson, was ratified. This act brought about the Revolutionary War which the Colonists fought against the British, and it was not until many years later that the basic tenets of the Declaration of independence could be put into effect as the Law of the Land. Even today, the democraticprinciples expounded in this document would seem far too dangerously liberal for many governments to adopt. Study, for example, the following quotation: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are: Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights,governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”.

On the thirty-first of October, Hallowe’en, a festivity rooted in Irish folklore, is observed. The term ‘Halloween is derived from two words: ‘hallow (consagrar) and ‘e’en‘, contraction of ‘evening’. This celebration is a combination of the myths surrounding Druidic Rites common to the Celts before theChristianization of Ireland, Scotland, England, and Gaul by the Romans, and of Catholic Dogma. The Druids believed that all spirits were reincarnated and that this ‘Return of the Souls’ took place upon a special night of the year. This belief, coupled with the Catholic observance of ‘All Souls Day’ and ‘Day of the Dead’ converged to give us ‘Hallowe’en’, a festive night when witches, black cats,and skulls made from pumpkins are used to adorn and amuse the revelers. It is customary to hold masquerade dances on this date and children turn into small demons demanding, from house to house, their ‘trick or treat’ (travesura o agasajo).

The first ‘Thanksgiving Day’ was observed by the Founding Fathers of Plymouth Colony on the last Thursday of November, 1621, a little over a year after thegood ship ‘Mayflower’, carrying around a hundred intrepid pilgrims, reached the shores of the New World.

These pilgrims spent a severe winter full or hardships and terrible privations. They planted their first crops in the early Spring-mostly corn and pumpkins, since both were indigenous to the new land. After harvesting in the Autumn, the Pilgrims invited the Indians who had befriended them, tojoin them in the First Thanksgiving Feast.

The classic dishes with which we celebrate this date today are the same as those which were then prepared by the Pilgrim housewives: turkey and cranberries, corn bread or corn stuffing, pumpkin pies and clams, which abounded on the shores of New England at the time of the first Thanksgiving and are still plentiful.

‘Saint Valentine’s Day’ isdedicated to lovers, lace, hearts and flowers. ‘Valentines’, those symbols of romance, are sent to sweethearts, wives, and dear friends. No one seems to know why two obscure Saints, both named ‘Valentinus’ and both born on February 14th, in Rome, at the beginning of the Christian Era, and both buried along the ‘Via Flaminia’ on the outskirts of Rome, should have become the Patron Saints of Lovers!Speculation permits us to assume that the Bacchanalia festivals which were outlawed by the Roman Senate in 186 B.C., due to the extremes of immorality which these reunions had reached, were replaced by more passive celebrations sponsored by either, or both of the two ‘Valentinus’. We do not know how the Roman citizens felt about a day celebrating romantic love and flowers taking the place of their...