Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Autumn traditions in Portugal










“Bolinhos e Bolinhós” (cakes and sweets) is a Portuguese tradition similar to Hallowe’en. It is celebrated in the region of Coimbra (in the centre of Portugal) on October 31st in the evening. On that day children carry some boxes of shoes and go from door to door asking for sweets and money and sing a song. This tradition is of Celtic origin, as Hallowe’en, and was later adopted by the Christian religion. This tradition reappeared when in November the 1st, 1755 an earthquake occurred in Lisbon and thousands of people died and the population of the city became even poorer. As the date was a religious holiday, in the following year people went throughout the city begging for money. Unfortunately from the 1980s this Portuguese tradition began to be forgotten and today there are very few people who remember it, as nowadays most children celebrate Hallowe’en, as other children in the USA and in other European countries.This year in our school, on October 31st there was a masks contest and students created different masks using recycled materials. There was an exhibition at the library and students also sang some traditional songs.
On November 11th we celebrate St Martin's Day - at our shool in the evening there is a big party and students, teachers and parents get together, make a fire and eat roasted chestnuts. On this day we also celebrate our school's "birthday".

Pedro Tomás, Márcia Pires
Class C, 7th Grade
School: EB nº2 da Lousã, Portugal

2 comments:

Gema said...

I like this new.

Ana Paula said...

Gosto muito da notícia da Márcia e do Pedro! Parabéns.

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