Spring Festival and Christmas

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Jiarui Cao Professor John Wu English 1301 20 April 2014 Spring Festival and Christmas Every nation has its own traditional festivals. The Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) is the major holiday celebrated in China while Christmas is the most important festival in western world. Those festivals give people chances to be away from regular work, to enjoy vacation, and to develop their relationships. The Spring Festival and Christmas have much in common. Both are prepared beforehand to create a joyous atmosphere, offer family reunions with gorgeous feasts and satisfy children with lovely presents. When discovering similarities, there are also many obvious differences between the two significant festivals, such as background, custom and problem. At the beginning, the background of Spring Festival and Christmas is totally different. Spring Festival, originated in Shang dynasty, was celebrated on the first day of first lunar month. According to legends, Chinese New Year started with the fight against a mythical beast called Nian who had a very big mouth came on the first day of every year to eat livestock, crops, and even human beings, especially children. One day, people saw that Nian was scared away by a little child wearing red. People realized that Nian was afraid of the color red. Therefore, when New Year came, the villagers would hang red lanterns and red spring scrolls on windows and doors and used firecrackers to frighten away Nian. Therefore, the tradition of observing the conquest of Nian is passed down from generation to generation, and the custom of putting up red decorations and firing firecrackers is also reserved in China. On the other hand, Christmas is an annual commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ and a widely observed cultural holiday, celebrated generally on December 25. While the birth year of Jesus is estimated among modern historians to have
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