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Australia
Most Australians have been dreaming of a white Christmas for centuries. But the traditional European Christmas is just a myth for Australians. Santas wearing thick woollen clothes don’t fit with Australia’s thirty-degree heat. Thankfully things are changing fast. Now they have their own Christmas, Australian style.
Australia is a country which is largely made up of desert and sandy beaches. For the first settlers, two hundred years ago, a plate of corned meat and a mug of billy tea might have been the best Christmas dinner available. As a new nation developed and grew richer, people tried to recreate the kind of Christmas that they used to have in Europe.
Christmas in Australia happens in the summer. However, we tried our best to deny the reality of a summer Christmas. In the class-room, children learned songs like Frosty the Snowman and Jingle Bells. Up until recently, the only Christmas cards published portrayed white winter Christmases. All this was a bit ridiculous in a country where 80 per cent of the land has never witnessed a snowflake, even in winter.
However, the last ten years have witnessed some big changes in the Australian lifestyle. Many Australians now believe that the country should break its connections with Britain and the British Queen.
Now Australians see themselves as inhabitants of the Asia Pacific region. So now Christmas has got an Australian identity.
It’s rare to find a flake of snow on Christmas cards these days. Now the publishers print Christmas cards with native Australian animals and landscape scenes of the Australian bush.
On Christmas day you’ll find a large percentage of kids on the beach playing with their new surfboards, building sand- castles rather than snowmen. Indeed one of the most typical Australian Christmas presents is a beach towel.
It’s not only with food and gifts that Australian Christmases differ from European ones. Because of the weather, the atmosphere of Christmas is different.
Instead of being a serious time where most families are indoors, Australians are usually outdoors in shorts and T-shirts, taking a cold six-pack of beer to a friend’s barbecue. There are loads of summer festivals with people celebrating Christmas in carnival style.
What is unique though is something that most Australians are starting to dream of. That is a Christmas of sunshine, surf and sand. Although to many Europeans this may seem strange, to many Australians it’s now the only Christmas worth dreaming of.
Canada
Canada is situated on the north of Northern America, washed by the Atlantic Ocean in the east, the Pacific Ocean in the west, and the Arctic Ocean in the north and in the northeast by the Baffin Bay and the Davis Strait, which separate it from Greenland. In the south and in the north Canada borders on the USA. It is a land of vast distances and rich natural resources. Canada became a self-governing dominion in 1867 while retaining ties to the British crown. Canada’s territory is the world’s second largest country, surpassed in size only by Russia. It includes many islands, notably the Canadian Arctic Islands, also called Arctic Archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. Economically and technologically the nation has developed in parallel with the US, its neighbor to the south. The total area is about 10 million sq km. Canada is slightly larger than the US. It is an important manufacturer, and its major cities, such as Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg are centers of commerce and industry.
Most of Canada’s inhabitants live in the southern part of the country and vast areas of the north are sparsely inhabited. The country is divided into ten provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan) and three territories (Northwest Territories, Yukon Territory, Nunavut Territory). The third territory called Nunavut, to be carved from the present Northwest Territories, was created in 1999.
The name Canada is derived from an Iroquoian term meaning «village».
Among the great rivers of Canada there are the Saint Lawrence River, draining the Great Lakes and emptying into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence; the Ottawa and the Saguenay rivers, the principal affluents of the Saint Lawrence River; the Saint John River, emptying into the Bay of Fundy.
The government type is confederation with parliamentary democracy. The capital of Canada is Ottawa.
Canada became independent from the United Kingdom on July, 1, 1867. Legal system is based on the English common law, except in Quebec, where civil law system based on the French law prevails.
French-speaking Canadians maintain their language, culture, and traditions, and the federal government follows the policy of a bilingual and bicultural nation. During the 1970s and 1980s the proportion of Asians among the Canadian population increased, and today those who count their ancestry as wholly Asian make up 8 to 10 percent of the population. More than two-thirds of the Asian immigrants live in Ontario or British Columbia. The remainder of the population is composed of people of various ethnic groups, such as German, Italian, Ukrainian, Netherlands Dutch, Scandinavian, Polish, Hungarian, Greek, and Native American. Blacks have never constituted a major segment of the Canadian population. Indigenous people make up nearly 2 percent of Canada’s inhabitants.
The largest religious community in Canada is Roman Catholic. Nearly half of Canadians who are Roman Catholic live in Quebec. Of the Protestant denominations in Canada the largest is the United Church of Canada, followed by the Anglican Church of Canada.
New York
New York is the largest city in the USA and the biggest seaport. It is the business centre of the United States.
New York is situated in the mouth of the Hudson river.
In comparison with such ancient historical cities as, say, Rome, London, Moscow or Paris, New York is quite young. It was founded in 1613 by Dutch settlers.
There are five districts in the city: Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Richmond. Manhattan is the central and the oldest part of the city. It is the district of business and finance. It is here in Wall Street that many business offices, banks and the world famous New York stock exchange are situated. The New York stock exchange dominates business life of many countries.
The total area of New York is 36-5 square miles or 900 square kilometers. Its population together with the population of its suburbs amounts to 16 million people.
Among the inhabitants of New York one can meet people of almost all nationalities. They Settled here during the immigration in the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century.
A traveler who visits New York for the first time wonders at the modern architecture. The Statue of liberty, which is on Liberty Island, was a present from France in 1876 on the Occasion of the 100th anniversary of American independence. This statue and a few 18th and 19th century Churches, hospitals, newspaper offices and other buildings are the only examples of «old» architecture in New York. Wherever your eyes travel, everywhere you can see sky-scrapers.
New York, one of the USA leading manufacturing cities, is the home of great firms and banks. The most important branches of industry are those producing vehicles, glass, chemicals and all kinds of machinery. The city has very busy traffic. Its street's and highways are full of cars and buses.
The mouth of the Hudson river makes an excellent harbour for numerous passengers and cargo ships from all over the world.
Speaking about New York one can’t but mention the outstanding role, the city plays, in the cultural life of the country. New York has many museums and art galleries which have collected works of art of many peoples and of all times. Many of them are on constant display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of Art.
Most of the theatres and cinemas are in or near Broadway, the longest street and the biggest shopping district in New York. The Metropolitan and Modern Arts Museums attract many visitors.
Manchester
Manchester is one of the English most important cities. It is located in the northern part of England, not far from Liverpool. Today the population of Manchester is 438,000.
Manchester began, when a wooden fort was built by the Roman army on a plateau about 80 AD. The fort was rebuilt in stone about 200 AD. Soon a civilian settlement grew up around the fort.
However in 407 the Roman army left Britain and the civilian settlement disappeared. The stone fort fell into ruin.
In 7th century the Saxons created a new village, but it was tiny. The surrounding area was thinly populated and was mostly forest. The Saxons called any Roman town or fort a caster. They called the old fort at Manchester Mamm caester. The village nearby took its name from the fort. By 1086 the settlement was called Mamecester. In time the name changed to Manchester. In 919 the king repaired the old Roman fort as a defense against the Danes.
At the time of the Normans in the 11th century Manchester was a small village, but things changed in the 12th century. The population of the country grew and trade and commerce developed rapidly. Many new towns were founded. The village of Manchester was made into a town in the early 13th century. In the year 1222 Manchester was granted the right to hold an annual fair. In the Middle Ages, a fair was like a market but was held only once a year. In the Middle Ages, Manchester was, at best, a medium sized town. It was certainly not nationally important. In Manchester there was a wool industry. In 1301 Manchester was given a charter, a document granting the townspeople certain rights. During the 16th century and the 17th Manchester grew steadily larger and more important. By the late 16th century it may have had a population of 4,000. By the mid-17th century it probably had about 5,000 inhabitants. However, it still wasn't a particularly large town. It may have been important locally but it wasn't very important nationally.
In the early 18th century Manchester probably had a population of around 10,000. It was still a medium sized town. The town continued to be famous for manufacturing wool, cotton, linen and silk. The first theatre in Manchester opened in 1753. By 1756 the population had risen to over 16,000 (including Salford). In 1761 the Bridgewater canal was built to bring coal from a coalfield to the town. However in the late 18th century the industrial revolution began. The population of Manchester soared and by the end of the century it had reached 70,000.
The Manchester Chamber of Commerce was created in1820. From 1828 horse drawn buses ran in the streets. In 1830 a railway to Liverpool opened.
In the early 19th century Manchester became world famous as a manufacturing centre. Wool, silk and cotton were manufactured and vast numbers of working people worked 12 hour days in the mills. There was also a paper making industry and iron foundries. Manchester University was founded in 1903. The central library was built in 1934. In the second half of the century manufacturing industry declined and was, to a certain extent, replaced by service industries such as education and finance. Tourism also became an important industry in the late 20th century. In 1996 the city centre was devastated by IRA bombs but it was rebuilt. The phoenix rose from the ashes.