Topic 20 Should We Celebrate Western Festivals?

With the booming of the globalization and the increase of the inter-cultural communications, a lot of Western cultural phenomena can be seen in China, among which there is the popularity of the Western festivals like Christmas, April Fool’s Days and Valentine’s Day and so on. The staunch lovers of these festivals are young people such as the high school and college students.

Attitudes toward the Western festivals are among the general public. Some people say that we should keep away from them and just leave them there. Other people contend that we need to be open-minded to the foreign festivals and learn some Western culture from them. As far as I am concerned, we should value our traditional festivals, which have been an integral part of the Chinese culture, and meanwhile, we can have a taste of the Western festivals just for fun. There are several reasons.

First of all, the traditional festivals have been the particular icons of Chinese culture. We have a lot of festivals such as Spring Festival, Lantern Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and so on. They are the most precious intangible cultural heritage that we have carried down from our ancestors. We, as a new generation in China, should shoulder the responsibility of protecting and rejuvenating them so that our offspring can enjoy and learn them in the long future. As we all know, the government also attaches importance to the traditional festivals. People in China will have a day off when a traditional festival comes.

Secondly, the traditional festivals are offering us the most important occasions or family reunion and the expansion of social connections. As is mentioned before, people do not have to go to work when they have the traditional festivals. As a result, they can go home and have a family party. They can fully enjoy the domestic bliss thanks to the traditional festivals.

What is more, the traditional festivals provide lucrative opportunities for the travel industry. People like to do traveling when they have some holidays. The economy also benefits from the traditional festivals.

Finally, a lot of foreigners are fascinated with our traditional festivals. I think this is conducive to cross-cultural communication. We do not have to ward off the western festivals as if they were threats. We can enjoy our own culture and have a taste of the western festivals so that we can improve our strength.

To sum up, the world is getting smaller and smaller. We should protect our culture on the one hand and on the other hand, we can also celebrate the western festivals for the sake of cross-cultural communication.