Easter In The UK
Just before Easter comes Good Friday. In the secular world life goes on as normal, but with one extra item in the shops: hot cross buns. These are spicy, sticky buns with currants in them which are similar to the normal ones you would get from a bakery. The only difference is that they have a cross drawn on them (usually with flour and water paste). Personally I like them best when they are cut in half, toasted and served with butter.
The biggest money-maker, though, is Easter eggs. These are not just painted eggs of the kind seen in Poland (although egg painting is popular with children). Easter eggs in Britain are made of chocolate. If you have a sweet tooth, don't waste your money on these. There is more packaging than chocolate, and you could get nearly twice as much just by buying a bar of the stuff. The egg is about half the size of a football and hollow. Inside there is a small bag of sweets. Again, it's cheaper just to buy a small bag of sweets.
In the old days hardly any shops were open over the Easter weekend. Now most of them are open, and DIY shops do some of their best business. As a lot of people are not working, it is a good time to do some home decorating, work in the garden, put up some shelves or just repair things that have been broken for some time. The weather is not quite hot enough to go to the coast so slightly more people will be at home than over the August Bank Holiday weekend. By the way, the DIY material which causes the most injuries (ask any casualty doctor) is patio paving stones.
I haven't got a TV listings magazine in front of me at the moment, but I can make one prediction about what will be on the box on Easter Monday. For as long as I can remember there has always been a James Bond film on one of the four terrestrial channels. The same is true at Christmas. You can play a game by guessing which one it is going to be. I reckon this Easter it'll be 'The World Is Not Enough', but I'll have to wait until next week before BBC and ITV publish their Easter programmes (you are reading this just over one week after I wrote it).
Some customs at Easter are the same in Poland and Britain, but they are generally the religious ones, and the churchgoing population in the UK is lower than here. What you won't see is people throwing buckets of water over each other on Easter Monday. That custom never got much further than this part of the world so if you try to soak someone in the street in a place like London, you'll probably get arrested.
Glossary
secular = non religious
spicy pikantny
a sticky bun lukrowana drożdżówka
If you have a sweet tooth = If you like eating sweet things
packaging opakowanie
hollow pusty
DIY = do-it-yourself majsterkowanie
a shelf (plural 'shelves') półka
paving stones płyta chodnikowa
on the box = on television
a prediction przewidywanie
a terrestrial channel = not a satellite or cable channel
a bucket wiadro
Questions
- What is the difference between a hot cross bun and an ordinary bun?
- What can you find inside an Easter egg?
- Why is Easter a good time for DIY shops?
- How are the television schedules different on Easter Monday?
- Which Polish custom on Easter Monday does not exist in Britain?
KEY
- A hot cross bun as a cross drawn on it.
- A small bag of sweets.
- Because more people buy DIY equipment then.
- There is usually a James Bond film on one of the channels.
- Throwing water at people.
Word pairs
All the words except one in each list go with the word in CAPITALS. Which ones?
e.g. Easter Day but not Easter coffee
EASTER bonnet vigil bunny chicken Island
SPRING lamb drive cleaning tide onion
EGG box white cup shell centre
KEY
Easter chicken, spring drive and egg centre