A contrastive analysis of Chinese and Western festivals 中西方节日对比分析.doc

A contrastive analysis of Chinese and Western festivals 中西方节日对比分析 Ⅰ Introduction There is great difference in culture between China and Western countries, the truth of which is self-evident, for example, language, education, festival, and so on. No one can deny it. Therefore, I choose this topic to study. “A holiday of a nation represents a glorious culture and concentrated customs of a nation.”①There are many festival in the world, but a lot of people don’ t know any festivals of them, and in the same country, different festivals have different meanings and even the same festival in different countries is celebrated in their own ways. Through contrastive analysis of Chinese and Western festivals, it is interesting to understand the unique charm and the cultural implication of their holiday culture. Ⅱ The contrastive analysis of two groups of great holidays. 2.1 Spring Festival VS Christmas day First of all, let’s have an analysis of spring festival in China and Christmas day in Western countries. In China, people regard spring festival as a very important holiday, because in the spring, there has been glorious weather with hundreds of flowers struggling colorfully. Everything is renewed and its beauty is beyond description. For several Millennia Chinese people like celebrating the most significant holiday — Spring Festival. Its original meaning is from agriculture. In ancient time, people instituted the paddy growth cycle as the “years”. In the booked titled“shou wen he bu”, there is a saying: “The year, the Valley is ripe.”②After the victory of 1911 Revolution in Chinese modern times, the year name has been fixedly gotten down. The Nanjing provisional government stipulated to use lunar calendar in the folk. And in the factory and school, the Jan 1st of New Year’s Day in lunar calendar is called Spring Festival. There is a fable about Spring Festival. In ancient time, there was a man named Wan Nian, who saw the Jieling at that time was very messy, so he decided to