How did you celebrate your Christmas Eve? Did you stay awake the whole night waiting for Santa Claus to come? Or did you go straight to bed after your Christmas dinner hoping to find some presents when you wake up the next morning?

For some people Christmas is about the presents that they get. For some it's about the dinner they have with their family. For others it's about the songs and the festive mood. There are those who only think of it as a holiday. And there are also those who go to church to pray.

How was my Christmas Eve? Nobody invited me to celebrate with them. Will you invite me to your Christmas dinner next Christmas?

Verbs

• stay [stayed, staying]
• awake [awoke, awaking]
• wait [waited, waiting]
• find [found, finding]
• think [thought, thinking]
• pray [prayed, praying]
• invite [invited,inviting]

I've never celebrated Halloween as a kid (child) and most of what I know about it comes from watching TV shows (Television programs) and reading books and magazines. So I don't know if what I'm saying about it is true or correct (accurate).

Why is that the grown ups (adults) put in the time and energy (effort) to make things look scary? I guess maybe they wanted to use Halloween as an occasion to mix things that are scary and fun together so that their kids (children) will grow up not being afraid of things like ghosts, zombies and other strange and scary things. Or maybe it's a way for grown ups to release their stress by scaring(frightening) others and themselves.

I think it will become a more cheerful and less scary celebration as it becomes more popular. I have no problem with that.

Key points

1. verbs

• celebrate [celebrated,celebrating]
• watch [watched,watching]
• read [read,reading]
• say [said,saying]
• scare [scared,scaring] -> scarying じゃないけど発音は近い。scaryはadjective
• frighten [frightened,frightening] この動詞の使い方は後で説明します。

2. words that are similar in meaning ここは意味が似ている。

   informal	formal
   kid	child
   grown up(s)	adult(s)
   kids	children

ここはenergyとeffortの意味が近いけど場面による同じかどうか異になる。

「ここは一つのパターン、どれがいいかな？」