Going Beyond !!!

 “Halloween”

   Halloween is an annual holiday celebrated on October 31^st. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holy day of All Saints, but is today largely a secular celebration.

   Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, wearing costumes and attending costume parties, carving jack-o'-lanterns, ghost tours, bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, pranks, telling scary stories, and watching horror films.

                                                 “Thanksgiving”
    Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Day is a harvest festival celebrated on November 26^th, primarily in the United States and Canada. Traditionally, Thanksgiving is associated with giving thanks to God for the harvest and expressing gratitude. While historically religious in origin, Thanksgiving is now primarily identified as a secular holiday.

“Abolitionism”

   Abolitionism was a movement in Western Europe and the Americas to end the slave trade and emancipate slaves. Anti-slavery sentiments were widespread by the late 18^th century; they had little immediate effect on the centres of slavery: the West Indies, South America, and the Southern United States. Pennsylvania passed An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in 1780. Britain banned the importation of African slaves in its colonies in 1807, and the United States followed in 1808. The British West Indies abolished slavery in 1827 and the French colonies abolished it 15 years later.

  In eleven States constituting the American South, slavery was a social and powerful economic institution, integral to the agricultural economy. By the 1860 United States Census, the slave population in the United States had grown to four million.

“Saint Patrick's Day”

   It is a public holiday on the island of Ireland, including Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, as well as in Newfoundland and Labrador and in Montserrat. It is also widely celebrated by the Irish Diaspora, especially in places such as Great Britain, Canada, the United States, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, and Montserrat, among others. It is celebrated on March 17^th.

  Originally, the colour associated with Saint Patrick was blue. However, over the years the colour green and its association with Saint Patrick's Day grew. Green ribbons and shamrocks were worn in celebration of St Patrick's Day as early as the 17th century. He is said to have used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish, and the wearing and display of shamrocks and shamrock-inspired designs have become a ubiquitous feature of the day. In the 1798 rebellion, in hopes of making a political statement, Irish soldiers wore full green uniforms on 17 March in hopes of catching public attention. The phrase "the wearing of the green", meaning to wear a shamrock on one's clothing, derives from a song of the same name.