SECTION B.
HOLIDAYS
CHRISTMAS
Christmas is a holiday celebrated on December 25 that commemorates the birth of Jesus.
Modern customs of the holiday include gift-giving, Church celebrations, and the display of various decorations — including the Christmas tree. Santa Claus is a popular mythological figure often associated with bringing gifts at Christmas for children.
The modern Christmas tree tradition is believed to have begun in Germany in the 18th century. From Germany the custom was introduced to Britain. Around the same time, German immigrants introduced the custom into the United States. Christmas trees may be decorated with lights and ornaments.
Christmas is typically the largest annual economic stimulus for many nations. Sales increase dramatically in almost all retail areas and shops introduce new products as people purchase gifts and decorations. In the U.S., the "Christmas shopping season" generally begins on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.
In most areas, Christmas Day is the least active day of the year for business and commerce; almost all retail, commercial and institutional businesses are closed. In England and Wales, the Christmas Day (Trading) Act 2004 prevents all large shops from trading on Christmas Day.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom the traditions are quite similar to those of Australia, Ireland, North America and New Zealand. They are also similar to the other countries of Northern and Western Europe. Christmas is very special to many UK citizens. Many shops sell Christmas decorations beforehand. It lasts until 6 January (Epiphany), as it is considered bad luck to have Christmas decorations up after this date. On Christmas Eve, presents are supposedly delivered in stockings and under the Christmas tree by Father Christmas. Many families tell their children traditional Christmas stories, about Father Christmas and his reindeer. One tradition is to put out a plate of Carrots (for the reindeer) and Mince pies and sherry for Father Christmas, to help him on his way. On Christmas Day, nearly the whole population has the day off to be with their family and friends, so they can gather around for a traditional Christmas meal, which is mainly a turkey or other meats, along with cranberries, roast potatoes followed by a Christmas Pudding. Another tradition is Carol singing, where many carols are sung by children on people's doorsteps, and by professional choirs. Other traditions include sending Christmas cards. On the whole, although Christmas has become commercialized, the British Christmas is still very traditional.
Churches and Cathedrals across the country hold masses, with many people, going to midnight mass, or a service on Christmas morning.
Television is widely watched: for many television networks, Christmas Day is the most important day of the year in terms or ratings. Many Britons still watch the Queen's annual Christmas message.
The Celebration of Boxing Day on the day after Christmas Day is a tradition practiced in the UK. It is a bank holiday.
Russia
Christmas celebration in Russia is not as widely followed as in Western countries in favor of the New Year celebration. Christmas is celebrated on the 7th of January (which corresponds to December 25 in the Julian Calendar). The tradition of celebrating Christmas has been revived since 1992, after decades of suppression by the communist government. It is centered on the Christmas Eve "Holy Supper", which consists of 12 servings, one to honor each of Jesus' apostles. The Russian traditions were largely kept alive by shifting some of them, including the visit by gift-giving "Grandfather Frost" and his "Snowmaiden", to New Year's Day. According to legend, he travels in a magical decorated sleigh drawn by three white horses, and delivers gifts to children.
Many current Russian Christmas customs, including their Christmas tree, or "yolka" (sometimes pine instead of it), were brought by Peter the Great, after his western travels in the late 17th century.
RUSSIAN NEW YEAR
New Year is the main holiday of the year in Russia – the most welcome and the most beautiful one, rich in history, fascinating traditions and amusing customs.
In the end of 1699 the Russian Emperor Peter I the Great issued an order to celebrate the New Year’s beginning on January 1 (by the Julian calendar at that) and for this purpose to decorate houses with pine-tree and fir-tree.
In 1929 Soviet authorities abolished Christmas and fir-tree decorations that were declared “priest-like” customs. The New Year was also abandoned. In the end of 1935, fir-trees and New Year festivities returned to people’s homes on December 31, 1935. Yet, it was not until 1949 that January 1 became an official day-off.
New Year Nowadays
The festive preparations start already in the mid December. The streets, shops, companies and enterprises are decorated with garlands, toys and posters; fir-trees appear outdoors. In the end of December homes are also decorated with fir-trees. Fir-trees are traditionally kept in homes till January 13-14, when the Russians celebrate the Old New Year.
Festive matinees, called New Year’s Yolka (i.e. fir-tree) are traditionally held in kindergartens and schools. Children dressed up as hares, snowflakes, and other characters, sing songs, play and dance around the fir-tree and get presents from Father Frost and Snow Maid.
Most Important Moments of the New Year’s Night
The celebrations start at about 11 pm, when the family is seated at the festive dinner. Shortly before 12 pm they toast “for the old year”, remembering and paying tribute to the good things it brought about. It is a custom in Russia to listen to the speech of the head of state broadcasted over TV and radio. The President traditionally summarizes the achievements of the past year and wishes Happy New Year to the citizens of Russia.
After the speech, at midnight sharp, the country listens to the Kremlin chimes, which signalize the beginning of the New Year. The chimes are followed by the country’s hymn.
During these exciting minutes all are drinking Champaign and wish each other Happy New Year. Afterwards lots of people like to go outdoors to let off all sorts of fireworks and lit Bengal lights. Festive performances with songs, dances and games are held at the central squares of cities and towns.
New Year Popular Believes
There is a whole range of believes concerning the celebrations of the New Year. The most famous saying asserts: “As you meet the New Year, so will you spend it”. Thus everyone does one’s best to celebrate this decisive holiday merrily and in the hearty company of friends and family.
They also say, that one must “leave all the debts to the old year”, i.e. return the debts before the beginning of the coming year. On the New Year’s Night one ought to be wearing brand new clothes, which at the best should be of the “lucky colours” of the year to come.
One of the most significant and breath-taking elements of the New Year’s Night is making wishes. They believe that the utmost wishes made on the New Year’s Night will surely fulfill in the New Year. There is a unique method of making wishes that gives almost a hundred percent fulfillment guarantee: while the chimes are striking twelve, one should write the wish on a sheet of paper, burn it on a candle, mix the ashes in his/her glass of Champaign and drink it before the chimes cease striking.
Try it yourself!
ADDITIONAL TEXTS
TEXT 1?
WHAT IF THERE WERE NO GRAVITY ON EARTH?
Gravity is one of those things we take completely for granted. And there are two things about it that we take for granted: the fact that it is always there, and the fact that it never changes. If the Earth's gravity were ever to change significantly, it would have a huge effect on nearly everything because so many things are designed around the current state of gravity.
Before looking at changes in gravity however, it is helpful to first understand what gravity is. Gravity is an attractive force between any two atoms. Let's say you take two golf balls and place them on a table. There will be an incredibly slight gravitational attraction between the atoms in those two golf balls. If you use two massive pieces of lead and some amazingly precise instruments, you can actually measure an infinitesimal attraction between them. It is only when you get an gigantic number of atoms together, as in the case of the planet Earth, that the force of gravitational attraction is significant.
The reason why gravity on Earth never changes is because the mass of the Earth never changes. The only way to suddenly change the gravity on Earth would be to change the mass of the planet. A change in mass great enough to result in a change in gravity isn't going to happen anytime soon.
COULD WE SURVIVE WITHOUT GRAVITY?
But let's ignore the physics and imagine that, one day, the planet's gravity turned off, and suddenly there was no force of gravity on planet Earth. This would turn out to be a pretty bad day. We depend on gravity to hold so many things down - cars, people, furniture, pencils and papers on your desk, and so on. Everything not stuck in place would suddenly have no reason to stay down, it would start floating. But it's not just furniture and the like that would start to float. Two of the more important things held on the ground by gravity are the atmosphere and the water in the oceans, lakes and rivers. Without gravity, the air in the atmosphere has no reason to hang around, and it would immediately leap into space. This is the problem the moon has - the moon doesn't have enough gravity to keep an atmosphere around it, so it's in a near vacuum. Without an atmosphere, any living thing would die immediately and anything liquid would boil away into space.
In other words, no one would last long if the planet didn't have gravity.
If gravity were to suddenly double, it would be almost as bad, because everything would be twice as heavy. There would be big problems with anything structural. Houses, bridges, skyscrapers, table legs, support columns and so on are all sized for normal gravity. Most structures would collapse fairly quickly if you doubled the load on them. Trees and plants would have problems. Power lines would have problems. The air pressure would double and that would have a big effect on the weather.
What this answer shows you is just how integral gravity is to our world. We can’t live without it, and we can't afford to have it change. It is one of the true constants in our lives!
TEXT 2?
HOW MUCH WATER IS THERE ON EARTH?
There's a whole lot of water on Earth! Something like 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons (326 million trillion gallons) of the stuff (roughly 1,260,000,000,000,000,000,000 liters) can be found on our planet. This water is in a constant cycle - it evaporates from the ocean, travels through the air, rains down on the land and then flows back to the ocean.
The oceans are huge. About 70 percent of the planet is covered in ocean, and the average depth of the ocean is about 1,000 meters. 98 percent of the water on the planet is in the oceans, and therefore is unusable for drinking because of the salt. About 2 percent of the planet's water is fresh, but 1.6 percent of the planet's water is locked up in the polar ice caps and glaciers. Another 0.36 percent is found underground in aquifers and wells. Only about 0.036 percent of the planet's total water supply is found in lakes and rivers. That's still thousands of trillions of gallons, but it's a very small amount compared to all the water available.
The rest of the water on the planet is either floating in the air as clouds and water vapor, or is locked up in plants and animals (your body is 65 percent water, so if you weigh 45 kilograms, 29 kilograms of you is water!). There's also all the soda pop, milk and orange juice you see at the store and in your refrigerator… There's probably several billion gallons of water sitting on a shelf at any one time!
TEXT 3?
GLOBAL WARMING
Global warming was once an uncommon term used by a few scientists who were growing concerned over the effects of decades of pollution on long-term weather patterns. Today, the idea of global warming is well known, if not well understood. It is not unusual to hear someone complaining about a hot day or a freak storm and remark, "It's global warming."
Well, is it? In this article, we'll learn what global warming is, what causes it, what its current effects are and what the future effects could be. Although there has been a scientific consensus on global warming, some aren't sure it's something we need to worry about. We'll examine some proposed changes in the United States' national policies related to curbing global warming and the criticisms and concerns surrounding them.
Global warming is a significant increase in the Earth's climatic temperature over a relatively short period of time as a result of the activities of humans.
In specific terms, an increase of 1 or more degrees Celsius in a period of one hundred to two hundred years would be considered global warming. Over the course of a single century, an increase of even 0.4 degrees Celsius would be significant.
To understand what this means, let's start by reviewing the difference between weather and climate.
Weather and Climate
Weather is local and short-term. Climate is long-term and doesn't relate to one small location. The climate of an area is the average weather conditions in a region over a long period of time. If the part of the world you live in has cold winters with lots of snow, that would be part of the climate for the region you live in. The winters there have been cold and snowy for as long as weather has been recorded, so we know generally what to expect.
It's important to understand that when we talk about climate being long-term, we mean really long-term. Even a few hundred years is pretty short-term when it comes to climate. In fact, changes in climate sometimes take tens of thousands of years. That means if you happen to have a winter that isn't as cold as usual, with not very much snow - or even two or three such winters in a row - that isn't a change in climate. That's just an anomaly - an event that falls outside of the usual statistical range but doesn't represent any permanent, long-term change.
It's also important to understand that even small changes in climate can have major effects. When scientists talk about "the Ice Age," you probably envision the world frozen, covered with snow and suffering from frigid temperatures. In fact, during the last ice age (ice ages recur roughly every 50,000 to 100,000 years), the earth's average temperature was only 5 Celsius degrees cooler than modern temperature averages [Source: NASA].
Global warming is a significant increase in the Earth's climatic temperature over a relatively short period of time as a result of the activities of humans.
In specific terms, an increase of 1 or more Celsius degrees in a period of one hundred to two hundred years would be considered global warming. Over the course of a single century, an increase of even 0.4 degrees Celsius would be significant. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of over 2,500 scientists from countries across the world, convened in Paris in February, 2007 to compare and advance climate research. The scientists determined that the Earth has warmed.6 degrees Celsius between 1901 and 2000. When the timeframe is advanced by five years, from 1906 to 2006, the scientists found that the temperature increase was.74 degrees Celsius.
The Greenhouse Effect
Global warming is caused by an increase in the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is not a bad thing by itself - it's what allows Earth to stay warm enough for life to survive.
Although it's not a perfect analogy, you can think of the Earth sort of like your car sitting out in a parking lot on a sunny day. You've probably noticed that your car is always much hotter inside than the outside temperature if it's been sitting there for a while. The sun's rays enter through your car's windows. Some of the heat from the sun is absorbed by the seats, the dashboard and the carpeting and floor mats. When those objects release this heat, it doesn't all get out through the windows. Some is reflected back in. The heat radiated by the seats is a different wavelength than the light of the sun that made it through the windows in the first place. So a certain amount of energy is going in, and less energy is going out. The result is a gradual increase in the temperature inside your car.
The greenhouse effect is a little more complicated than your hot car. When the sun's rays hit the Earth's atmosphere and the surface of the Earth, approximately 70 percent of the energy stays on the planet, absorbed by land, oceans, plants and other things. The other 30 percent is reflected into space by clouds, snow fields and other reflective surfaces [Source: NASA]. But even the 70 percent that gets through doesn't stay on earth forever (otherwise the Earth would become a blazing fireball). The Earth's oceans and land masses eventually radiate heat back out. Some of this heat makes it into space. The rest of it ends up getting absorbed when it hits certain things in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, methane gas and water vapor. After these components in our atmosphere absorb all this heat, they emit energy (also in the form of heat). The heat that doesn't make it out through Earth's atmosphere keeps the planet warmer than it is in outer space, because more energy is coming in through the atmosphere than is going out. This is all part of the greenhouse effect that keeps the Earth warm.
