Happy Thanksgiving 2015 in Spain!!!

Thanksgiving Day in The United States is a harvest festival and an important public holiday which is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. This Day has been celebrated nationally on and off since 1789. Together with Christmas and the New Year, Thanksgiving is a part of the broader holiday season. 
The event that Americans commonly call the 'First Thanksgiving' was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in 1621, the feast lasted three days, and it was attended by 90 Native Americans and 53 Pilgrims. 

Thanksgiving in Canada is an annual holiday, occuring on the second Monday in October, which celebrates the harvest and other blessings of the past year. It has been officially celebrated as an annual holiday in Canada since 1879. 
As a liturgical festival, Thanksgiving corresponds to the English and continental European harvest festival, with churches decorated with cornupias, pumpkins, corn, wheat sheaves, and other harvest bounty. 
While the actual Thanksgiving holiday is on  Monday, Canadians may gather for their Thanksgiving feast on any day during the long weekend. Foods traditionally served at Thanksgiving include roasted turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberrry sauce, sweet corn, pumpkin pie and various fall vegetables like squashes and Brussels sprouts. Baked ham and apple pie are also commonly served as well as regional dished such as salmon or wild game.

Our Language Assistant at our School is from Canada this year. She was so happy to talk about how they celebrated Thanksgiving in her country and her own family.

It is funny how countries take some other countries festivals like their own ones. If you decided to go shopping this year you were able to see that big supermarkets had the 'Black Friday' signs in their stores.

 http://moneysaverspain.com/black-friday-cyber-monday-spain/

Spain embraces Black Friday

Stores sign up en masse for US-imported sale day, though its business impact is still unclear

http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/11/27/inenglish/1448619676_644097.html

Bonfire Night at Lope de Vega Primary School

Let's take a look at how our School celebrated 

Bonfire Night!! 

It's going to be fun!!

Our school has been working on Bonfire Night for a while. Depending on the kid's age, teachers and students learnt a lot about what Bonfire Night is, why, how, where and when it started to be celebrated. Who and what was involved on this event and what there is left nowadays from the festival started. 

Teachers helped students to do some crafts like bonfires and fireworks.

Lope the Vega thought about make some kind of effigies to represent Guy Fawkes and at the same time use the guys later as scarecrows for a vegetables garden.The 'guys' were made by families and kids together, and then, they went on a contest. There was a winner, saying it properly, it was a couple, Guy Fawkes and his girlfriend. 

Families did a good job, and the results were extraordinary and gorgeous.

I hope you enjoyed Bonfire Night this year and we can see each other next year!!

Guy Fawkes Night versus Halloween

Bonfire Night 

Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Bonfire Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5th November, primarily in Great Britain. Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605, when Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. 

Celebrating the fact that King James I had survived the attempt of his life, people lit bonfires around London, and months later the introduction of the Observance of 5th November Act enforced an annual public day of thanksgiving forthe plot's failure. 

Remember, remember the fifth of November ...

Immortalized in this nursery rhyme, the Gunpowder Plot is introduced early into the young minds of children throught the United Kingdom.

http://www.bonfirenight.net/index.php

We hope you celebrated Bonfire Night in style at a spectacular London fireworks display.

To this day, it is customary for the cellars in the Houses of Parliament to be searched by the Yeoman of the Guard before each State Opening of Parliament. 

Bonfire Night is also known as Fireworks' Night, it is a British tradition dating back to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when Catholic conspirators tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament and King James I.

It is celebrated each year with fireworks and bonfires. Effigies of Guy Fawkes are often burned on top of the bonfires. 

Top 10 Bonfire Night Celebrations

http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/nov/05/top-10-bonfire-night-celebrations-fireworks-displays

The Flaming Tar Barrels of Ottery St. Mary

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelvideo/9705502/Ottery-St-Mary-Tar-Barrels-the-ultimate-bonfire-night-party.html

Has Halloween now dampened Bonfire Night?

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20206853

Halloween at CEIP Lope de Vega with our Linguistic Assistant: