Summer Celebrations

The longest day of the year is called the summer solstice. In Britain, it is usually on 21 June, which is the first day of summer. The word solstice comes from two Latin words: 'sol', which means sun, and 'sistere', which means to stand still.
  Summer was always a good season for people in the past, because it was easy to find food. It was also a good time to find sweet honey, so the first full moon in June is called the honey moon. Many men and women marry in June, and the holiday that people take after they marry is still called the honeymoon.
  At Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire, England, there are some special circles made of big heavy stones which have been there for about five thousand years. How did they get there? Why are they there? Who put them there? There are lots of different answers to these questions, but nobody can really be sure.
  Because the summer solstice is traditionally a time of sun, light, food, love, and hot weather, people come from all over England to Stonehenge and Avebury on June 21 to celebrate. Some of the visitors are Druids, who follow an old pagan religion, older than Christianity; some are travellers, who like to move around the country and live in lots of different places; and some just want to stay up all night and then watch the sun come up in a very famous, old and interesting place.
  Soon after the summer solstice there is an important date in the USA - the Fourth of July. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many people sailed from Britain to North America and started a new

life there. New homes like this in other countries were called colonies. The British king was still king of the people in the colonies, and so they had to send taxes to Britain every year. But the thirteen American colonies wanted to be free from Britain: they wanted their government to be in America. They did not want to send money to Britain, and many people became very angry about this.
  In 1770 British soldiers shot some of these people in Boston, and in 1773 there was the famous Boston Tea Party. A tea ship came to Boston and there was a fight about the taxes on the tea. Three hundred and forty big boxes of tea went into the water! Now King George the Third and his government were angry too.
  On July 4 1776, the United States government in Philadelphia agreed to the Declaration of Independence. This said that the United States was a free, or independent country, and that George the Third was not its king anymore. Now it was war. The British and the Americans fought each other until 1781, when the Americans won. In 1783 the United States of America was born.
  The first Fourth of July celebration was in Philadelphia in 1777, during the war. There were guns, parades, fireworks, music, and a lot of noise. Now, every year on the Fourth of July, Americans celebrate Independence Day.
  In many towns, there are parades through the streets with loud music and lots of bright colours. The red, white and blue American flag flies everywhere. It has fifty white stars and thirteen stripes (seven red and six white). The fifty stars are for the fifty states in the United States, and the thirteen stripes are for the first thirteen states - the colonies. The flag has changed many times but today's flag goes back to the fourth of July 1960, when Hawaii became the fiftieth state.