Is Christmas a threat to Chinese culture

安徽大学

课程期末考试

论文

课程名称：英语报刊选读

任课教师：汪家海

学号：G1*******

姓名：方哲

日期：2015.12.25

Is Christmas a threat to traditional Chinese

culture?

As today is the Christmas day, it is no exaggeration to say that the enthusiasm of Chinese people to celebrate this great festival has been heated to a peak in recent days with the colorful Christmas ornaments and posters everywhere in the streets, the colorful festoon lamps shining on the trees in the evening, the beaming salesmen dressed as Santa Clauses in the shopping malls, the new tradition of holding Christmas parties and rejoicing with wild excitement at Christmas Eve, the exchange of gifts and postcards among families and friends, let alone the ubiquitous Christmas caps which have swept over among young people a couple of days ago. A survey carried out in some big cities of China shows that 68.5% of correspondents celebrate Christmas Day, and 61.8% celebrate Valentines’ Day, of course most of the correspondents are young people. However,as Christmas in China is in full swing, the traditional Chinese festivals are correspondingly losing their charm for the fact that some of them such as Labor day and New Year’s day are nothing more than vacations to most of Chinese people nowadays, which has led to a contentious issue—Is Christmas a threat to traditional Chinese culture？

As the debate goes, some hold the point that Christmas has no negative effect on the traditional Chinese festivals while others are strongly opposing them and maintaining that Christmas may undermine traditional Chinese culture. As for my part, the increasing popularity of Christmas in China is a threat to traditional Chinese culture to some extent. The reasons are as follows.

In the first place, the increasing popularity of Christmas in China may cause the loss of cultural identities (the loss of self-confidence and self-respect) towards Chinese culture. To illustrate,it is quite a ubiquitous phenomenon in China nowadays that a great number of young men almost know nothing about the profound implications of traditional Chinese festivals but are familiar with the western festivals like Christmas and Valentines’ Day and go after them like a flock of ducks, which has brought about a serious shock to Chinese traditional culture and the sense of the community. It is quite facile to conjecture that these young people may regard the celebration of traditional Chinese festivals as something outdated and uninteresting while chasing the “fashionable” and fascinating western festivals rather blindly for the reason that western festivals like Christmas and Valentines’ Day seem to be

more fun, magnificent and upscale than traditional Chinese festivals superficially, which is quite ironic since traditional Chinese festivals can undoubtedly outweigh those western festivals in regard of the centuries-old history and the cultural implications they possess. In this regard, the popularity of the western festivals in China may serve as a factor of leading a large crowd of young people to the misunderstanding that traditional Chinese culture which is symbolized by traditional Chinese festivals are inferior to western culture.

In addition, the increasing popularity of western festivals in China will distract our attention from traditional Chinese festivals. For instance, Christmas is on December 5th, while Chinese traditional New Year’s Day is to heel on January 1st. It is not difficult to draw the conclusion that after such a grand revelry with tremendous excitement and preparation, most of Chinese people will not have equivalent time and energy to celebrate the following New Year’s Day at a spectacular scope. Another good case in point is that in Chinese culture,there are Chinese own traditional Qixi Festival for expressing love and Double Ninth Festival for showing our respect to the elderly, which have gained little attention of the youth in recent years since they are crazy about the Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day

and Father’s Day. Thus, it is quite reasonable to presume that the increasing popularity of western festivals in China has already distracted a great deal of attention of young people from celebrating traditional Chinese festival.

Last but not least, the increasing popularity of Christmas in China will result in an unfavorable prospect of inheriting and increasing popularity of Christmas in China is a threat of western cultural aggression to some extent. Specifically speaking, it is the result of the foreign cultural invasion and the infiltration of the foreign“soft force”, which makes Chinese society evolve into one with foreign over-culture and will lead to the threat of inheriting and developing Chinese culture without denial. For instance, as a piece of news went, when a group of primary students were led around a Confucian temple by their teacher in Zhejiang Province, one of them recognized the statue of Confucians with long, white beard as Santa Claus, which directly reflected the loss of inheritance of traditional Chinese culture as a result of the impact of foreign culture. For another, suppose that the over-worship of western festivals in China continues, Chinese will eventually be inclined to admire the values of western culture like individualism, liberty, individual rights, which are deeply rooted in those western

festivals like Christmas and Valentines’Day, rather than show cordial respect to traditional Chinese values such as filial piety, responsibility, unity and harmony which comprise the core of traditional Chinese festivals like Tomb-sweeping Day, Double Ninth Festival, Spring festival and so on. As a result, it will also bring about the decrease of Chinese fellowmen’s enthusiasm for observing, inheriting and developing traditional Chinese festivals.

All in all, after close examination, we may draw the conclusion that the increasing popularity of Christmas in China is a threat to traditional Chinese culture to some extent, as it may cause the loss of cultural identities towards traditional Chinese culture, distract Chinese people’s attention from it and lead to an unfavorable prospect of inheriting and developing it. Generally speaking, the over popularity of Christmas in China is to some degree a by-product in the background of globalization, which indefinitely gives rise to the collision and assimilation of different cultures. Nevertheless,while having an open mind towards foreign cultures,what we Chinese ought to bear in mind all the time is the responsibility that we shall never let foreign cultures take the dominant place of traditional Chinese culture, which means the absorption of foreign cultures should never

impair the inheritance and development of traditional Chinese culture.