1、 Comparison Of Spring Festival and ChristmasThe Spring Festival is a traditional festival in celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year. It originated in the Shang Dynasty from the peoples sacrifice to gods and ancestors at the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one. The Spring Festival fa
2、lls on the 1st day of the 1st lunar month, often one month later than the solar calendar, then comes to an end when the Lantern Festival is finished. With the new year approaching, every family is busy preparing for the reunion. People completely clean the indoors and out doors of their homes as wel
3、l as their clothes, bedclothes and all their utensils. Men and women go out to do spring festival shopping. Then people begin decorating their rooms featuring an atmosphere of rejoicing and festivity. All the door panels will be pasted with spring festival couplets. The content varies from house own
4、ers wishes for a bright future to good luck for the new year. The chinese character “fu” is a must. The character put on paper can be pasted upside down, for in chinese the “reversed fu” is pronounced as “fu dao le”. Whats more, red paper-cuttings can be seen on window glass and brightly colored new
5、 year paintings with auspicious meaning may be put on the wall. In china, people always celebrate and spend the Spring Festival together with their parents and children at home. No wonder many people hurry home even from thousands of miles away, whether they are living or working abroad. This is the
6、 tradition handed down from remote antiquity. People attach great importance to Spring Festival Eve. At that time, all family members enjoy eating as many as over 10 to 16 courses of delicious dishes. In particular, almost every family makes dumplings. After the dinner, the whole family will sit tog
7、ether, chatting and watch TV. The Spring Festival party broadcast on CCTV is essential entertainment for the chinese both at home and abroad. According to custom, each family will stay up late till the clock strikes twelve, and then they let off various fireworks outdoors to see the Old Year off and
8、 usher the New Year in. The next three days are good time for relatives, friends, classmates as well as colleagues to exchange greetings.As the most important holiday in china is Spring Festival, the most popular holiday is Christmas in western. Although no one knows exactly when Jesus was born, chr
9、istians throughout the world celebrate his birthday on December 25. This date was selected in the fourth century so that Christmas would replace the pagan celebration of the winter solstice. People usually have two weeks for this holiday, beginning shortly before christmas and ending soon after New
10、Year. When Christmas around the corner, western people start to prepare for the holiday excitingly. Red and green are christmas color. They decorate homes with evergreens. The winter custom of decorating homes and churches with evergreens began in ancient times. Branches of fir or spruce were though
11、t to bring good luck and guarantee the return of spring. The modern american evergreen is usually covered with colored balls and strings of colored lights. The poinsettia plant is another familiar christmas decoration. Its star-shaped red leaves are an ideal symbol of the holiday. In western, every
12、family traditionally have turkey or ham, sweet potatoes, vegetables, and cranberry sauce on Christmas Eve. After this big meal, children hang stockings by the fireplace, hoping that Santa, a fat, jolly man wearing a red suit, red hat, and long white beard, will fill them with candy and toys. In addi
13、tion, many families go to church on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. After services, they gather around the tree and open their gifts and exchange Merry Christmas greeting with each other. Then they sit down to enjoy a traditional christmas dinner.Festival，which reflects the most delicate and re
14、presentative respect of culture, is the essence of humans daily life. Spring Festival and Christmas are the most important festivals in China and Western countries, which can be described as the representatives of a culture, both with deep historical cultural connotation, and on behalf of peoples hope and expectation, it is a typical exploration of the cultural differences between the Chinese and western festivals. It is convenient to absorb the outstanding foreign cultures sensibly by summarizing the differences, in order to protect and promote the cultural essence of the Chinese nation.
