A Contrastive Study of Valentine’s Day and the Double-Seventh Day.doc

A Contrastive Study of Valentine’s Day and the Double-Seventh Day 1. Introduction Western and eastern culture have obvious differences, which is caused by the obstacles of languages, areas and others. If there is no communication, there would be no culture. Culture reflects a national characteristic, not only including historical and cultural background, but also containing different human race’s viewpoints on life, life style and ways of thinking. The paper takes Valentine’s Day and the Double-Seventh Day as an example, comparing the two festivals’ origins, traditions, customs, revealing their culture connotations and people’s psychological identities. They reflect the faith, ethics, morality, art, literature and other aspects of different ethnics and nations. However, with the development of globalization, cooperation and competition in economy and culture among countries are more and more. As a carrier of culture, the Double-Seventh Day and Valentine’s Day also exchange much and make much collision. The fundamental purpose of studying the two festivals is to carry forward the excellent traditional culture of Chinese nation, at the same time, to learn from and use the essence of Western culture, so as to better promote the heritage of Chinese splendid traditional festival culture and provide some useful reference and guidance for the development of contemporary advanced culture. The meaning of studying the two festivals is, on the one hand, to reveal the traditional values and cultural psychology so that to help Chinese dig the profound meaning of traditional festivals and objectively understand the uniqueness of traditional festival culture, on the other hand, to understand the shortcomings of Chinese traditional culture by analysing the differences between the two festivals which can help Chinese to maintain national character and cultural uniqueness and carry forward Chinese traditional festivals culture in the era of globalization. There will be one main w