Easter Fun Facts

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Hello, I’m teacher Robin, welcome to another livestreaming class. If this is your first time to join us, you may not notice the difference in the background. But if you’ve been watching for a while, you’ll notice that I am filming from a different place today, as you know, many of us are actually in confinement right now. So we’re working from home. And so the past three weeks, I’ve been filming the live classes from my home office. And today I’m actually in my, my living room. So it’s a little bit different setting, but I’m still at home. And today’s topic is Easter traditions. So as many of you know, Easter is coming up this weekend and it’s going to be a little bit different this year, because again, many of us are stuck at home and we can’t participate in the activities that we normally would. And for those of you who don’t normally participate in Easter or don’t know the history, I’m going to give you some traditions and some fun facts about traditions that you may not know. So check your knowledge and see if you already knew some of these fun facts.

Did you also know that, during Easter, there are some typical foods that people eat, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries? We have things like hot cross buns, we have Easter cakes, and there are typical colors that people tend to wear around Easter time, which are like pastel colors. So, like a yellow, pink, these kinds of very light colors, light green, light blue. These kinds of colors are very popular around Easter time.

So the first fun facts that we have about Easter are the most traditional ones that many of you already know. So as you know, Easter is a religious celebration and it comes from the ascension, basically, of Christ. And so we celebrate that day, so many people, the 40 days leading to Easter, we celebrate what is called Lent. So during this period of Lent, it’s kind of a time of reflection, of, sometimes people even give something up for Lent. So that could be like eating food with sugar, you could give up social media, you could give up, you could give up all kinds of different things, or people take something on for Lent. So you might learn a new hobby, you might start reading more, it could be like the Bible if you’re religious, or it could be reading more in general. So I think for this Lent, this is a good idea because we are stuck in our homes, maybe taking something on learning something new doing something new, could be better than actually giving something up.

So another Easter tradition that’s very popular that you may know about already is the Easter eggs. So what many people do is they decorate eggs so you can actually dye them in different colors. So you boil the eggs as if you were going to eat them and you dye them in different colors. And then what many people do is they hide the eggs around their garden or their yard, different places outdoors for children to then go and find so that’s a very popular tradition of Easter. And another popular tradition is eating chocolate. Now, I mean, people eat chocolate all throughout the year, but specifically eating chocolate or chocolate-shaped bunnies, for example. These are very common traditions during Easter.

And as I said, the bunny, so the Easter Bunny. This is the more pagan non-religious part of Easter is the Easter Bunny. So this Easter Bunny comes and he is the one who actually is supposed to hide the eggs for the children to find. So those are some of the most traditional Easter celebrations, Easter traditions.

And now I’m going to test your knowledge and see if you know about some of the lesser known ones. Did you know that in Barbados, there is a Kite Festival where kites are flown to represent Christ’s ascent to heaven in the Easter time? Did you know that?

Did you know that in a small town in Spain there is actually the dance of death “La Danza de La Muerte” where people dress up as skeletons and dance around During the Easter season?

Did you know that in a small town of Greece, they actually have a rocket war, where they shoot off rockets and try to hit each other’s bell towers at the different churches in this town?

So hopefully you have learned something new about Easter. And now I want you to participate in the comments. So I want you to tell me, do you participate? Do you celebrate Easter with your family? What do you normally do? What do you normally eat? Do you attend a church service? And I want to know, specifically this year, as we are so many of us in confinement, what are you going to do? Many people have big celebrations with their family. And again, they attend maybe a church service. So since we can’t do those kinds of things because we can’t be with a lot of people, how are you going to celebrate this year. Or, if you don’t celebrate Easter, and you didn’t know some of these things, tell me what you learned new in today’s class.

So as you’re doing that, I want to tell you more about our course at ABA. So again, you can take advantage of this time at home and you can study English with us, we have so many opportunities for you to continue improving your English so you can watch these live classes on our app on Live English, you can follow our course. And you can do it on your phone, you can do it from your home computer. So we have a lot of options for you to study with us. We also have all of our social media channels. So we have Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. we’re updating content on those channels every day so you can learn something new. We have our blog, ABA journal, so you can find some good articles there with practical information in English. So, there are so many opportunities for you to practice your English with us. You can also follow our ABA challenge during the confinement time every day, we have a new, a new challenge for you to learn something specific, a specific grammar point, for example, in English, so follow that and make the most of this time at home. So I don’t know how many more weeks we’re going to be doing this. I’ll be filming these classes from my home, home office or home library. But you can make the most of it. So you can also check out the previous classes where I gave you some tips on how to study from home. And in another class we talked about how to practice English with music. So there’s so many ways to learn English and practice every day even when you’re at home, watching movies, watching TV shows listening to music, etc. and following our ABA course and Live English feature.

So I hope that this class has been fun and useful for you. I look forward to reading your comments of how you are celebrating Easter, what’s typical for you and your country. And I hope that all of you are doing well. Remember that we’re in this together we are going to get through this and I hope that you are doing well and making the most of this time at home to learn your English with us here at ABA. So thanks again and I will see you next week.
Bye!