摘      要

在全球化发展的时代，国人乐于接受外来文化的倾向是一致的，舶来品在国内的流行也就特别引人注目，其中，除了外来的消费文化如洋车、洋酒等领导消费新潮流之外，一些洋节，如情人节、母亲节、圣诞节等也逐渐流行起来。为了使节庆这个承载着独特民族传统的文化介质更好地传承继续下去，并不被其他文化和节庆所吞噬，通过对西方（主要是美国）圣诞节和中国春节进行定量描述，在归类和比较的基础上，定性分析了中美两国文化的不同特征及价值重心取向，认为我国现行的官方、民间二元结构的节日体系应该朝着尽量谐和的方向改革，官方节日频率应该增加，做出更多让世人记住历史上有着伟大贡献的人，让人们多的记住中国的传统节日，有更多的激情和精力去了解它们的来源，学习它们存在的意义。

关键词：圣诞节，春节，文化差异

Abstract

In the globalization, people all prefer to accept the foreign culture. The goods from abroad are popular in the cities, and attract many people. Except the consumer culture, like the foreign car and wine, which lead the new trend of the times, some foreign festivals, like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s day, Christmas day, are also in fashion. In order to make the Chinese Spring Festival a unique traditional culture, and inherit its meaning in the culture, continue to exist in the history and not to be overwhelmed by other foreign culture and festivals, this thesis analyses the differences between the Christmas and Spring Festival by means of the comparison. The dual system of official and folk should be developed into harmony, the government should do more things to increase the official festivals, commemorating the people who have made great contributions, and the festival should make people remember more traditions and festivals in order for them to have more passion and energy to understand their own history, and acquire their meaning of existence.

Key words: Christmas day, Spring Festival, cultural differences

1   Introduction
1.1    Introduction to Spring Festival
The most important traditional festival for Chinese is the Spring Festival; it is also called the Lunar New Years or Chinese New Years, because it is on Chinese lunar calendar which is different from the solar calendar. The Chinese calendar is based on cycles of the moon phase, and linked with the seasons drift each solar year by 11 to 12 days, and come back to the position it had in relation to the solar year approximately every 33 solar years. The first day of a month is the day when an astronomical new moon appears in a particular time zone.( The Spring Festival begins on the first day of the first month in lunar calendar and usually ends with the Lantern Festival, the 15th day of the first month). In the 23rd day of the last month of the last year, people will have a great house cleaning. In the last several days, people will buy a lot of things for this Spring Festival, such as, sugar, melon seeds, peanut, of course the new clothes. All of these actions are set for the big festival. The last evening of the past year is the time for the big family to get back “home”, and have a reunion to celebrate the end of the this year and a new start of next year. In the evening, the big family will have dumplings and sit in the front of the TV, watching the Spring Festival Gala Evening. At 12 o’clock of the last day or 0 o’clock of the New Year, people will touch off the firecracker for the exciting moment. The first day of the festival is usually used to pay a New Year call to the parents; the second day is used to visit the parents-in-law. The rest relatives are visited in the next days. The gifts are often exchanged in the visiting. In the last day of the festival—the Lantern Festival, also called “Xiao Nian”, people will have a special food—Yuanxiao, made of glutinous rice. Traditionally, after having the delicious food, people will head out to look at the festival lantern, and guess the answer of the riddles written on them.