The British year: more customs and festivals

The customs-and-festivals quiz in this category covers the national days, the two November dates, Hogmanay, Burns Night, Diwali and Eid al-Fitr. This second set covers the rest of the year the Life in the UK syllabus walks through, from February to December, in twelve questions.

The everyday customs come first: Valentine's Day on 14 February and its unsigned cards, April Fool's Day and its rule that the jokes stop at midday, Mothering Sunday, and Father's Day. Mothering Sunday is where people most often go wrong. In the UK it falls three weeks before Easter, so it moves every year, while the second Sunday in May is the American date. Father's Day is fixed to the third Sunday in June.

The Christian year gets four questions. Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day, is the day before Lent begins. Good Friday marks the death of Jesus, two days before Easter Sunday. Christmas brings its dinner and pudding, and Advent is the four weeks of waiting before it. Halloween is asked through its roots, an old festival for the start of winter held on the eve of All Saints' Day.

Three questions cover festivals of other faiths kept in the UK: Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of light that lasts eight days; Vaisakhi, the Sikh festival in April that marks the founding of the Khalsa in 1699; and Eid al-Adha, which remembers Ibrahim's readiness to sacrifice his son and is a different festival from Eid al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan.

The wrong options are taken from other days in the calendar wherever possible, so each explanation also tells you where the distractor really belongs. By the end you can place most of the year's customs. The material is a quiz only and is not a mock test of the whole syllabus. The questions and explanations are Zestly's own and no handbook text is reproduced.

• Say what happens on Valentine's Day, April Fool's Day, Mothering Sunday and Father's Day, and when
• Place Shrove Tuesday, Lent, Good Friday and Easter in order and say what each marks
• Describe Halloween's origins and the traditions of Advent and Christmas
• Identify Hanukkah, Vaisakhi and Eid al-Adha and the faith each belongs to
• Tell Eid al-Adha from Eid al-Fitr

Practice material written by Zestly from publicly known facts about customs and religious festivals kept in the UK. No text is taken from the Life in the UK handbook.