Comparison On Chinese And Western Traditional Festival Culture

Among all the elements that consist a nation's culture, traditional Festival Culture is the most essential and richest factor. As we all know, Chinese and Western traditional festivals are two different cultural forms evolved in comparatively independent cultural systems, which possess peculiar characteristics and varied manifestation.With the global economy integration aggravating, cultural exchanges between China and western countries become more frequent and broad. Many western festivals and customs have diffused into China, like Christmas, Valentine's Day, April Fool's Day and there appears to be a tendency that almost all social groups have come to take them seriously. While Chinese tradition festivals like the Spring Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-autumn Festival etc. have been pounded to some extent. Few people know the connotation of Chinese traditional festivals like Qixi Festival (so-called "the seventh evening of the seventh moon" ). Nowadays, to some extent, Chinese festivals are holidays for eating food, and nothing more. We eat Jiaozi during Spring Festival, Yuanxiao on the Fifteen of January of Lunar Calendar, Mooncakes at Mid-autumn Festival and glutinous Rice Dumpling during Dragon Boat Festival. So it seems that if you eat these things, you are celebrating these festivals. But if we don't stand night watch during the Spring Festival, if we don't climb up high on the Fifteen of January of Lunar Calendar, if we don't admire the moon on Mid-autumn Festival, what's the difference between the traditional festivals and ordinary days? How can it possible for us to inherit the traditional customs accompanying the festivals? This has initiated heated discussion among scholars, folklorists and representatives of the National People's Congress and Political Consultative Conference.The fundamental purpose of studying the traditional festival culture is to carry forward the tradition and forge ahead into the future, namely to uphold the splendid national culture and make full use of the fine essence of western culture, thus promote and carry forward the splendid culture of Chinese tradition, and provide useful reference and guidance for the contemporary cultural undertakings.The aim of the essay, on one hand, is to reveal the social and historical experience, the traditional value notions and the innermost cultural psychology contained in the traditional festival culture in order to help us to find the connotation of the festival, through which we can realize the ethnical characteristics and peculiarity of the Chinese and western traditional festivals. On the other hand, through the comparison between the two different festival cultures, we can know better the advantages and disadvantages of the two cultures. So it can help us retain better the ethnical characteristics and the peculiarity of Chinese festival culture, thus enabling us to glorify our culture.This essay mainly adopts the research method of combining history and logic. Based on large amounts of materials, this essay reveals the similarities and differences between traditional Chinese and western festival cultures by utilizing the methods of comparing, inducing and deducingThe originality of this essay lies in the methods of combining the macroscopic and microscopic angles to compare the similarities, forms and connotations in great detail, which gives us a clear picture of the similarities and differences between the two.All in all, though it is theoretically and practically significant to study the Chinese and western traditional festivals, the academic circle don't pay much attention to it. And the research made usually pays attention to either the similarities or differences between the two. Systematical and general research hasn't been made. So, by writing this essay, 1 hope more and more scholars will notice this field, and they can be stimulated to make research in this field.