Holidays and sports in Britain

Sport plays a prominent role in English life. Popular team sports in England are association football, cricket, rugby union and rugby league. Major individual sports include badminton, athletics, tennis, golf, motorsport and horseracing. A number of modern sports were codified in England during the nineteenth century, among them cricket, rugby union, rugby league, football, tennis and badminton. The game of baseball was first described in 18th century England^[1][2]

Although it differs from sport to sport, English sport often has fierce rivalries with Scottish and particularly Australian sport, which spans the whole sporting spectrum.

England has its own national team in most team sports, but the United Kingdom sends a combined team to the Olympics, which is formally "Great Britain and Northern Ireland" but commonly referred to as "Great Britain". Competition between the home nations was traditionally at the centre of British sporting life, but it has become less important in recent decades. In particular, football's British Home Championship no longer takes place. In some sports there are still national English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish teams.

The club competitions in most team sports are also English affairs rather than British ones. There are various anomalies however, such as the participation of the three largest Welsh football clubs in the English league system and an English club in the Scottish Football League.

The relative prominence of national team and club competition varies from sport to sport. In football, club competition is at the centre of the agenda most of the time because clubs plays more matches each year, but the four national teams are also followed avidly. In cricket the national team is much more widely followed than the county competitions, which have a limited profile, whereas in rugby league club competition generally overshadows international fixtures. Rugby union falls between these two with very high profile international competitions and a strengthening club game.

Sport England is the governing body responsible for distributing funds and providing strategic guidance for sporting activity in England. There are five National Sports Centres: BishamAbbey,Crystal Palace, HolmePierrepont National Watersports Centre, Lilleshall and Plas Y Brenin National Mountain Centre. Everyday Sport is Sport England’s physical activity campaign. There are 49County Sport Partnerships in England with areas for responsibility separated by Local Authority County boundaries.

The English Institute of Sport is a nationwide network of support services, aimed at improving the standard of English athletes. Services include sports medicine, physiotherapy, sports massage, applied physiology, strength and conditioning, nutrition, psychology and Performance Lifestyle support. It is based at 8 regional hubs and other satellite centres.

The Minister for Sport and Tourism and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have responsibility for sport in france

England, like the other nations of the United Kingdom, competes as a separate nation in some international sporting events. The English association football, cricket (the England Cricket team represents England and Wales)^[6] and rugby union teams have contributed to an increasing sense of English identity. Supporters are more likely to carry the St George's Cross whereas twenty years ago the British Union Flag would have been the more prominent.

It may seem surprising but the British have fewer holidays than many other countries. Some of them are named Bank Holidays due to the fact that on those days the banks are closed. In England and Wales they comprise at present five bank holidays (New Year’s Day, Easter Monday, spring and late summer holidays at the end of May and August respectively, and Boxing Day¹; they also have two common holidays (Good Friday², Christmas Day). In Scotland and Northern Ireland they have six bank holidays, plus two other public holidays. The particular dates of the bank holidays are fixed annually.

New Year’s Day

January, 1 It is a bank holiday though many Britons do not celebrate on New Year’s Eve. In Scotland New Year’s Eve is called Hogmanay³ and is an occasion for joyous celebration. In London Scottish people gather on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral and sing "Auld Lang Syne"⁴ at midnight.

Easter

April, 3 The word Easter owes its name and many of its customs to a pageant festival hold eostre which is the name of Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring time. Every spring European peoples celebrated the festival to honour the awakening of new life in nature. Christians related the rising of the sun to the resurrection of Jesus and their old spiritual rebirth. This "holy" day is celebrated in many countries of the world.

Spring and Summer Bank Holidays

The Summer Bank Holidays is the most popular holiday, because it comes at a time when children are not at school. Many families try to go away to the seaside or the country as they may indeed have done at Easter or in Spring.

Guy Fawkes Night

November, 5 Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night is an annual celebration held on the evening of 5 November to mark the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605, in which a number of Catholic conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, attempted to destroy the United Kingdom's Houses of Parliament, in London. The occasion is primarily celebrated in the United Kingdom where, by an Act of Parliament called The Thanksgiving Act, it was compulsory until 1859, to celebrate the deliverance of the King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Festivities are centred on the use of fireworks and the lighting of bonfires.

Halloween

October, 31 Halloween is also called All Saints’ Eve. It has ancient roots in the polytheistic Celtic harvest festival of Samhain (pronounced /sɑːwɪn/) 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.

Remembrance Day

November, 11 Remembrance Day (also known as Armistice Day) is observed throughout the Commonwealth and dates back to November 11, 1918 when all fighting in the First World War ended. it now commemorates British soldiers, sailors and airmen who gave their lives in the two world wars. Special Services are held and wreaths are laid at the Cenotaph, a war manorial at Whitehall, where thousands of Londoners observe the two-minute silence and participate in the remembrance ceremony. Similar ceremonies are held throughout the country.

Christmas

December, 25 In England Christmas is the most important of all the bank holidays of the year. it is celebrated much the same way as in the United States of America. On December 26, the Boxing Day, traditionally people give each other Christmas presents, which used to come in boxes. It is a very pleasant custom indeed.

London remains one of the world’s strongholds of pageantry much of which is centred on traditional observances connected with the Royal family. They are always attracting large crowds of spectators, native Londoners as well as foreign visitors. Here are two of them.

Trooping the Colour

This ceremony is held on the Sovereign’s official birthday in June. This is the most colourful of all London’s annual events, a pageantry of rare splendour with the Queen riding side-saddled on a highly trained horse. On Horse Guards’ Parade in Whitehall the Queen inspects the Brigade of Guards, dressed in ceremonial uniforms. Then comes the Trooping ceremony, followed by the March past of the Guards to the music of the bands. Specially noted should be the precision drill of the regiments.

The State Opening of Parliament

This is another royal event at the end of November which draws thousands of spectators, who see the Queen on the drive from Buckingham Palace to the Houses of parliament in the State Coach. The public are not admitted to parliament to see her read the speech from the Throne, prepared for her by the Government. But the State Opening is televised. Visitors are admitted to the Public Galleries only by the personal invitation of the members of Parliament.