级别: 北海新人
显示用户信息 
- UID453095
- 注册时间2011-07-01
- 最后登录2014-11-30
|
The holidays in my family are very diverse. Our custom is to celebrate Christmas every year as a religious observance, complete with Advent wreathes and Midnight Mass. Most of my in-laws observe Christmas purely as a secular holiday, with the focus on exchanging gifts, stockings, a Christmas tree, and other traditional customs. There is a lot of listening to Christmas music, my favorites are the carols sung by Nat King Cole, and sometimes even some eggnog. My nieces and nephews enjoy the day the most, especially when they get to open the gifts under the tree from Santa Claus. One of my brother-in-laws is Jewish, and so he celebrates Hanukkah, the festival of lights, when he lights a candle each of the eight nights on the menorah. My niece gets a small gift each night of Hanukkah and of course spins the dreidel. With both celebrations in the same family, we sometimes call it Chrismukkah. But the holidays are no longer just Christmas and Hanukkah in the United States. More recently, there are some people who celebrate a new holiday, Kwanzaa. This is a mostly African-American event, with parades and other parties to highlight African-American heritage. Started here in Los Angeles, this celebration runs for 1 week after Christmas, and is a mostly secular celebration. Whatever tradition you celebrate, December is always a festival time of year. Today we are talking about the holidays, when someone says at least in the United States the holidays with the definite article “the”, they are usually referring to Christmas, Hanukkah and possibly Kwanzaa. These are December holidays for the most part celebrated by the different groups in the United States and of course all over the world. The holidays I say in my family are very diverse, and to be “diverse” means that there are many different types, many different varieties. Our custom in the family where I grew up is to celebrate Christmas as a religious observance. And the “custom” is of course like a tradition, a “religious observance” means that we celebrate it as a religious holiday, so it could be a holiday, it could be another religious event. Part of the traditional religious observance of Christmas include Advent wreathes and Midnight Mass. Well, “Advent” is the four week period before Christmas which in some Christian churches is celebrated as a special time of preparation, Advent means the coming or to come, and “wreathes” are circular, round, pieces of usually some sort of parts of the tree or branches of green, and the wreathes has a places in it for four different candles, each candle representing one of the weeks before Christmas. A “Mass” is a religious ceremony in Catholic Church as well as in some other churches call their religious celebration a Mass, “Midnight Mass” is of course the Mass at midnight, the very first moment of Christmas. And it is traditional in many churches in the United States and other places you have a Mass at midnight with the and so forth. I say that many of my in-laws observe Christmas purely as a secular holiday. “In-laws” refers to anyone that you are related to by marriage, so my wife’s mother is my mother-in-law, my wife’s brothers and sisters are my brothers and sisters-in-law. The expression “purely as a secular holiday”, “purely” means solely or only, “secular” means it’s not religious, so when someone talks about his secular event, they mean a non-religious event. In a traditional secular Christmas there is of course exchanging of gifts and stockings and a Christmas tree. To exchange gifts means you give me a gift and I give you a gift, so we exchange, each person receives something. A Christmas stockings is also a very common custom in the United States, most of the customs come from Europe, particularly northern Europe and Christmas stockings are literally big socks that people either put on their fireplace, hang on their fireplace or put somewhere in the house and the idea is that you are supposed to put gifts inside of this big socks or stockings, stockings is just another word for big socks. A Christmas tree is a large green tree that people decorate, they put things on it like some what we call ornaments, and “ornament” is a decoration that you hang or put on a Christmas tree. The Christmas music that I like to listen to are carols and “carols” is a Christmas song, and my favorite singer of Christmas song is Nat King Cole, “Nat King Cole” is a famous singer in the United States and anywhere from the 1940s and 50s, he has a wonderful deep voice, so if you have a chance, try to listen to some songs sung by Nat King Cole. One of the things that some families use to celebrate Christmas is eggnog. “Eggnog” is a drink that is made of eggs and cream, and usually a little alcohol, although you can have non-alcohol eggnog, eggnog without alcohol as well. I say that my nieces and nephews enjoy this holiday, because they get to open their gifts under the tree from Santa Claus. It’s traditional to put Christmas gifts underneath the Christmas tree and then either on Christmas Eve in some families or on Christmas morning, the 25th, we open up the gifts or presents. Santa Claus of course is the mostly conventional symbol of Christmas and Santa Claus is supposed to go around and give gifts to all the good boys and girls in the world, so hopefully you will get something from the Santa Claus this year. I mention that one of the other holidays we celebrate in December is called Hanukah and “Hanukah” which can be spelled in English a couple of different ways. It’s a Jewish celebration; it sometimes called the festival of lights. A “festival” is another word for a “celebration” and it’s a celebration, a commemoration where the Jewish community remembers a famous event in Jewish history and the celebration usually is observed by lighting a candle each of eight nights. so Hanukah lasts or takes eight days，it’s a eight-day celebration, and each night of Hanukah you light another candle on what is called the menorah, and the “menorah” is a candle stick holder, it’s the name of the thing that you put the candle into, to hold them. My niece gets gift each night of Hanukah and I say she of course spins the dreidel, a “dreidel” is a Yiddish word, the word from the Yiddish language. and Yiddish was a language that was popular among Jewish in Europe, and it’s still spoken in parts of the United States where emigrant can speak this languages. Yiddish is a combination of German with Hebrew in other language words as part of it and many Yiddish words are very well known to Americans, some very common words in Yiddish. And someday I will do a podcast about words in Yiddish in American English. I mention that the dreidel is something that my niece spins and another word for dreidel is a “top”. And a top as a toy is something that you spin or you twist quickly and then it continue spinning on its own, and it’s a very popular toy among children of course. One of the terms that has been invented in the last few years to talk about the holidays particularly in families where there is both a Christian and a Jewish member is a term called Chrismukkah which is a combination of Christmas and Hanukah. Of course it’s not a real celebration; it’s sort of a joke word to talk about celebrating used to important holidays. There is a new holiday that is celebrated in some parts of the United States, that is called Kwanzaa. “Kwanzaa” is celebrated by some African-Americans, and African-Americans or Blacks, the more common term that was African-Americans have a celebration that begins the day after Christmas, December 26th, and continue for one week. This is mostly a secular, a non-religious celebration. And it’s a celebration of the African-American heritage or the history and culture of the African-American people. December 26th is the beginning of Kwanzaa, December 26th is also called the Boxing Day in Canada as well as in Great Britain. And it’s not called Boxing Day in the United States, but if you live in Canada or in Great Britain you will know that the day after Christmas is called the Boxing Day. and that is a public or national holiday in these countries, I am not exactly sure why it is called Boxing Day, some people think it is because the gifts would be given the day after Christmas to the servants in a rich household, the people who work for them got the Christmas gifts in boxes on the day after Christmas
|
