©
Macmillan Polska 2011
PHOTOCOPIABLE
Student’s Worksheet A
EASTER TRADITIONS
1. Read the text and write 5 questions about it. Ask the questions to another student
and then answer his/her questions.
Easter is a Christian festival. It is a moveable feast, which means its date varies each year
depending on the lunar calendar. Easter Sunday falls on the fi rst Sunday after the fi rst full moon
following the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere.
A lot of Easter customs are similar across the globe. Christians observe Lent, which is a 40-day
period of fasting in preparation for Easter. At Easter they go to church and participate in
processions.
Other traditions, also observed by non-religious people, include decorating or dyeing Easter eggs
and sending out greeting cards. There are also different games: the Easter Egg Hunt, which is a
search for chocolate eggs hidden by the Easter Bunny, Egg Rolling, which involves rolling eggs
down the hill or Egg Tapping with participants using hard-boiled eggs to tap other people’s eggs
in order to crack them. These customs involve symbols associated with Easter: eggs, chicks and
bunnies, which all symbolize new life.
A lot of countries have their own unique Easter traditions. In Australia, the symbol of Easter is a
bilby, which is a native animal with long ears and a long tail. Australian children get chocolate
bilbies as Easter presents. On Easter Saturday, Germans have a festive get-together to build the
Easter Fire, which is an enormous bonfi re made from old Christmas trees so as to clean away the
last signs of winter. In Greece, people attend a midnight service on Easter Saturday. Each person
brings a tall white candle. Children’s candles are often lavishly decorated with heroes or storybook
characters.
When it comes to Easter food, eggs are a staple everywhere. Other dishes vary from country to
country. In Britain, Hot Cross Buns, i.e. spiced tea cakes, are traditionally served on Good Friday.
Roast lamb is the preferred meat for the main meal on Easter Sunday. Americans have ham as
traditional Easter food. As the Easter dessert, Russians have paskha, which is a kind of cake made
from cottage cheese and fi lled with dried fruit. Spanish people eat bread pudding called the
torrijas. It consists of slices of warm bread soaked in milk, sugar and egg, fried in olive oil.
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