Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: The festival culture, with distinct national features and various presentation forms, is a precious cultural heritage of a nation. As an embodiment of the ethos, which develops in the very society, the traditional festival involves many cultural meaning of a nation such as the faith, the concept, and the thinking method and so on. This paper will analyze the main traditional festivals in Chinese and Western countries from the perspective of cross-cultural communication, i.e. difference in culture, religion, and ethic, attempting to provide readers the intrinsic meaning of the main traditional festivals in Chinese and Western countries, so that they can understand each other better, develop friendship, and be equipped with the knowledge of cross-cultural communication.

Key word: traditional festivals in Chinese and Western countries; difference; comparative analysis

摘要：节日文化是一个国家宝贵的文化遗产，具有鲜明的民族特色和丰富多彩的表现形式。传统节日承载着一个民族历史进程中沉淀下来的信仰、观念、思维方式等民族文化内涵,是民族精神在特定的社会土壤上长期孕育的结果和重要载体。本文将从中西方文化差异、宗教信仰和伦理道德等角度对比分析中西方主要传统节日的差异，试图让读者在了解中西方传统节日内涵和节日习俗的基础上相互了解，增进友谊，同时建构必须的文化知识与跨文化意识。

关键词：中西方传统节日；差异；

1. Introduction
It is mentioned in the Oxford English Dictionary that festival is an occasion for feasting, celebration, or a day or time of religious significance that recurs at regular intervals. Language reflects culture, and festivals as a part of culture have a great influence on language (Sun, 2007). On the festival, people may give thanks to the good harvest, commemorate an honored person or event, or pay respect to the dead, or celebrate a culture. Festivals, as a culture phenomenon, come into being during the process of human development. And the traditional festivals of a country convey a lot of elements in it, such as character, belief, concept, ethic, view of value, to name just a few. With the development of globalization, the traditional festivals, which are the carrier of national cultural, are inosculating and impacting with the culture from all over the world. Thus, traditional festivals have attracted considerable attention in resent years.
However, some researches have focused only on the description of the cultural differences, other work has sought to show how cultural differences in traditional festivals both reflect and reproduce social differences.