Hello!! NOVA武蔵小金井校です!!
今回はエミリー先生が故郷のMaine州の紹介や名産物、秋になるとどんなイベント事があるのかを書いてくれました🤗
みなさまはご自宅で英語の長文を読む時間は作れてますか？！
是非この機会に読んでみて下さい↓↓
Fall in Maine
Maine is the most north eastern state in the US, and as such, it experiences all four seasons. Fall is my favorite season in Maine and I would like to tell you why.
What do I think of when I imagine fall in Maine? Here’s a list:
• Beautiful fall foliage.
• The smell of wood burning in wood stoves.
• Fall sports like running, soccer, and football.
• Halloween.
• Pumpkin spice.
• Pumpkin picking.
• Apple picking.
• Apple cider.
• Apple pie.
• Corn mazes.
• Flannel.
• Scarecrows.
• Cool weather.
If I were to go into detail about every bullet point listed above, this blog entry would be far too long. Let me share with you just some of the highlights.
Maine is one of the most popular places for tourists to visit for “Leaf peeping” or in other words, to see the colorful leaves. Maine is famous for its vast forests and untouched wilderness. ¾ of the state to this day remains forested. People come from all over the country just to see Maine’s leaves. I try to avoid touristy area and I like to enjoy the view from my childhood home, but I also love to take the chance to ride through Blacks Woods on Route 1 between Machias and Ellsworth when I can.
Families in Maine also love supporting local farms and orchards during their rich fall harvest season. Apple picking and pumpkin picking are activities that I have enjoyed doing since I was a child. These farms or orchards will often sell goods make from their products, such as apple cider (both non-alcoholic and alcoholic) and apple cider donuts. I love Treworgy’s pumpkin ice cream more than anything else! These places also often host Halloween events, such as haunted houses or even haunted hayrides. Haunted hayrides are like haunted houses except outside on a trail in the forest. Guests will ride on a trailed, often driven by a tractor, and scare actors will appear in decorated sets to scare them.
Many farms also have corn mazes when farmers will cut out a maze into their corn field, often in a special design. There are state-wide and nation-wide competitions for the best corn maze designs. One year, a local farm won a competition by creating a maze shaped like Winnie the Pooh!
Of course, Americans love Halloween. For many of us, Halloween is our favorite holiday. We like to carve jack o’ lanterns, wear costumes, and have parties. Halloween is not just a holiday for children in the US, either. Many adults host adult-only parties or visit bars and clubs. Some haunted houses are even adult-only because they’re too scary for children. It’s generally children who tick-or-treat, however.
You may not know this, but Halloween is derived from pre-Christian western European pagan traditions. Similarly to Obon, it was believed that spirits could easily enter into our world at this time of the year. People in the past would light candles in their homes to guide spirits, have big parties with food from the harvest, and light bonfires as the nights grew longer. Have you ever wondered by bats are associated with Halloween? It’s because their favorite food loves the light of a bonfire: insects! Bats would hunt for insects around these bonfires and so people began to connect them to this season. Spiders also appear in larger numbers during this time of the year, so we associate them with Halloween, too.
Pagan traditions varied largely across western Europe, but most people give the Irish credit for bringing the modern holiday of Halloween to the Americas. In pre-Christian Irish tradtion, people celebrated a festival called Samhain (pronounced like “Saw-when”) which, again similarly to Obon, was a time when people believed spirits could come to our world more easily. People would leave candles in their windows and leave offerings of food or money for their loved-ones spirits to find. To keep evil spirits away, they would carve vegetables, such as turnips, into scary faces and place a candle inside.
Eventually Christianity spread to Ireland and people began to forget where these traditions came from. The Catholic church wanted many people to join them, so often they would allow local peoples to keep their holidays as long as they changed them to become Christian. This happened with Samhain. The Church created All Saints Days, otherwise know as All Hallows Day (hallow means holy). This was on November 1st-November 2nd. On this day, all Christian Saints were meant to be honored. It was also believed that this was a good time to pray for the spirits on loved ones who have passed away. At that time, it was believed that if no one prayed for your spirit, it couldn’t go to heaven. It would be stuck in an in-between world called Purgatory. So poor children began to take advantage of this. They would go around to many houses and ask for food. They would tell the people in their houses that they would pray for their loved ones souls if they gave them food. Eventually, people started making “soul cakes”, little sweet cakes that they would give to children in exchange for prayers. These “soul cakes” became candy in modern times and eventually kids also stopped offering prayers. That tradition became Trick or Treating! Eventually, All Hallows Eve (the evening before All Hollows Day) was shortened to “Hallowe’en” and then “Halloween”.
In the early 1900s, many Irish people left Ireland and moved to the United States. These people brought their traditions with them and they eventually became popular with people of all backgrounds in the U.S. Companies started selling costumes and encouraging costume parades and costumes parties to keep naughty children from pulling pranks on Halloween (which is still a popular tradition today). Now Halloween has spread all over the world, including Japan, and it is becoming more popular every year!
メイン州では秋になると紅葉狩りが行われます🍁
ハロウィンには大きなカボチャを使って馬車を作ったりします🐎
トウモロコシ畑を使った迷路もございます★
中々の長文でしたが全て読めましたでしょうか？！
難しい部分は辞書や翻訳アプリを使って読んでみて下さい(^^♪
エミリー先生に会ったらこちらに書いてある内容の話題を振って頂くと喜ぶと思います♪
それではレッスンのご予約、お待ちしております🤗
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