Christmas was a very ordinary day for most people in America' s southern colonies.
A.Y
B.N
C.NG
Christmas was a very ordinary day for most people in America' s southern colonies.
A.Y
B.N
C.NG
Who are most responsible for estABlishing Christmas traditions in America?
A、Roman Catholics
B、Anglican churches
C、The German sects
D、Buddhists
A.bustled
B.soared
C.filled
D.broadened
A.Y
B.N
C.NG
A、Thanksgiving Day
B、Halloween
C、Christmas
D、Saint Patrick's Day
A.busted
B.soared
C.filled
D.broadened
in the North and South America, Australia and Eueope, and in the most of Christian world are Christmas and Easter. __2__Christians celebrate the birth of Christ on Christmas.
How Americans Celebrate Christmas
Christmas is America' s most popular holiday. Some people will attend church and observe Christmas as the birthday of Christ. For others, Christmas is just a day of fun and celebration, a time for family and friends to gather together, exchange gifts and enjoy a huge holiday dinner. Christmas Day will need weeks of preparations. Since the last days of November American homes and stores have been decorated with Christmas trees and bright lights. Schools and churches have been presenting special holiday concerts. People have been going to parties, finding gifts and preparing special Christmas food. For a large number of Americans, Christmas is surrounded by more traditions than any other holiday. Yet, many of these traditions are not really very old ones in the United States. In fact, the nation's first settlers would have. been very surprised to see how Americans celebrate Christmas today.
People in other parts of the world, of course, have been celebrating Christmas for many centuries. In fact, December was a winter holiday season in northern and southern Europe even before the birth of Christ. And the ancient Romans celebrated the New Year on December twenty-fifth. Some experts believe that is why the Roman Catholic Church set the birth of Christ on that day. Christians borrowed other Christmas traditions from ancient times. In the years before Christ, for example, people honored the evergreen tree as a sign of life after death. For Christians, it became a sign of Christ's birth. By the 16th century Roman Catholics in Europe were celebrating Christmas with lively parties filled with eating and drinking. Many of the first Europe an settlers in America, however, disapproved of such customs. They believed people should honor God in simpler, quieter ways, so Christmas became a day just like any other day for most people in America's northern colonies.
In America' s southern colonies, however, the Church of England became the established religion. Its traditions were closer to those of Roman Catholic Church. So it became common for people on large farms in the south to celebrate Christmas with huge dinners and dancing. And in many parts of America, smaller groups of settlers from other western European countries observed Christmas with their own national customs. After 1,800, all these people began to mix together more and they began to borrow Christmas traditions from each other. Settlers from Ger many, for example, observed Christmas by cutting live evergreen trees and covering them with candies and fruit. By the middle of the 19th century, people all over America were putting up evergreen trees at Christmas. Dutch settlers in New York were most responsible for creating another popular American tradition--Santa Claus.
The story of Santa Claus began hundreds of years earlier. During the fourth century, a Roman Catholic Church official called Nicholas of Myra became famous for his many good actions. Nicholas was made a saint (圣人) after his death and it became common in northern Europe to hold a celebration on December 6th, the day Nicholas died. All kinds of stories were told about Saint Nicholas and the Dutch brought one of these stories with them to America. They believed that each year the saint rode a white horse from home to home. He gave presents to children who had been good, and coal or straw to children who had been bad. Other Americans who lived nearby greatly enjoyed the Dutch celebrations. They decided to make Saint Nicholas part of their own celebration of Christmas. But he got a new name Santa Claus. It was taken from the Dutch words for Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus. The Dutch imagined Saint Nicholas to be a serious, even frightening person, who would punish as well as give gifts. But in 1822, an American named Clement C. Moore wrote a Christmas poem for his children. The poem, called A Visit From St. Nicholas, created a
A.Y
B.N
C.NG
The Christmas Tree
In pre-Christian Europe, people believed that trees (fruit trees and evergreens in particular) were embodiment of powerful beings. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the designated miracle play for December 25 was the story of Adam and Eve and in this play the chief prop was an apple-hung evergreen called the paradise tree. In the sixteenth century, German families began bringing evergreens into their homes during the Christmas season. By the seventeenth century, they were known as Christbaiime (Christ trees) and were being decorated with fruits, candies, cookies, candles and wafers resembling the eucharistic host.
The first Christmas trees in America were set up by German immigrants in the 1820s and the almost universal adoption of the custom dates from the 1910s. Now at Christmas time decorated trees stand in about two-thirds of American homes. The modem American tree is usually covered with colored balls and strings of colored lights. The star on top represents the Star in the East which guided the three Wise Men to Bethlehem.
Christmas is traditionally celebrated on______.
A.December 24
B.December 25
C.December 30
D.December 31
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