IELTS speaking special days and celebrations

Anzac Day is a special day, though calling it a celebration would be wrong — it is closer to a ceremony. It falls on the twenty-fifth of April and is marked on the same day in both New Zealand and Australia. It starts very early, before dawn, when ex-service people walk to the nearest war memorial, often wearing their medals and their best suits. It can be genuinely moving to watch. What interests me is that attendance has risen rather than fallen over the last twenty years, which is not what you would expect as the events themselves move further into the past.

Labour Day was first marked in 1890 but was not officially recognised until 1900. It commemorates the beginning of better conditions for employees — working hours were shortened, unions were formed, and conditions improved gradually from there. In practice, nobody does anything particular to mark it now. It is essentially a day off in October. That said, it does prompt you to think about how hard working life must have been for it to have needed a public holiday to draw attention to it.

Waitangi Day is probably the most argued-over public holiday in the country. It commemorates the signing of a treaty between the British Crown and most Maori chiefs, well over a hundred and fifty years ago, and the disagreement is not really about the date but about what the treaty meant and whether its terms were honoured. For a period in the 1970s it was renamed New Zealand Day, and then changed back. I would say the argument is a healthy sign rather than a problem, because the alternative is a national day nobody thinks about at all.

My favourite is Christmas, and I like it for reasons that have very little to do with the religious side of it. The first is straightforward: I do not have to work and I still get paid. The second is that I live in a busy city, and by Christmas Day most people have travelled out of town, so the traffic drops away almost entirely. That makes visiting people far easier than it is at any other time of year, and there is always an absurd amount of food in everybody's house. Because it falls in summer here, a lot of people eat outside or on the beach, which surprises visitors.

People here celebrate birthdays much as they do across most of the Western world, though largely for younger people — once you are past a certain age you would rather not be reminded. Adults tend to go to a pub or have friends round; sometimes there is a surprise party, which I have never understood the appeal of. Cards come from a wide circle but presents usually only from close friends and family. The one custom that survives everywhere is the cake with a candle for each year, which you have to blow out in a single breath if the wish is going to count.