老外说——圣诞二三事

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【老外说】是一档以“采访”老外为主的节目，帮助大家更好的了解中西文化差异，一窥英国人、美国人日常生活。每周一更新。本栏目适合精听/泛听。可做听写练习。

一年转眼之间就剩个小尾巴了，这几年，我们国内的圣诞的气氛也慢慢浓起来了，红红绿绿的圣诞元素从12月起就到处见得到。那今天我们就来听听美国人是怎么过圣诞节的吧。

Gwen

Christmas is coming up. Did you do any preparations? Do you have any plans on spending this Christmas? Have you bought a Christmas tree or anything?

Yes, we have bought Christmas decorations. We did homemade stockings, and we did a homemade Christmas-ball decoration. Then we decorated the tree.

Gwen

So Christmas is really a big deal.

Yeah, it is. It's a time when you get a gift.

Gwen

So you do have a 5 or 7-day holiday during Christmas time?

During Christmas time, we have like a time… it depends on… because it's different cultures here in America. So some of us would celebrate somebody else's culture during the time that we're adding it up to Christmas. We'll look at other people and say they're doing this at the same time, too. We'll do Kwanza (宽扎节，非裔美国人的节日). We'll do…What is the other one? I forgot what it's called, but we look at other people's culture that's mixed here and we all added it together with the Christmas festival.

Gwen

So in America, different cultures coexist? And Christmas usually for christians, right?

That's what they attended it for, but now it's open. Everybody does it.

Gwen

So it's become more of a family-gathering festival instead of…

Yeah, making new friends or either bringing in some stranger. Some people do it as a charity to give back to the people who don't have. Some people do it now to, like you said, bring family together and things like that.

Gwen

Different cultures have different festivals around new year. For example, Jews have Hanukkah (修殿节，历时八天的犹太人光明节，纪念公元前 165 年重献耶路撒冷圣殿).

That's what it is! Hanukkah! Yeah!

Gwen

And Chinese people of course, we have Spring Festival. It's based on lunar calendar (农历) of course. So do you know these festivals?

Yes, that was the one I couldn't think of, the Hanukkah. So Kwanza, Hanukkah, and then you have the lunar festival. Yes. We think about all those.

Gwen

You do celebrate all these festivals?

Yes, because they teach us in our schools. So in class, we do like a cultural thing, this is what they teach us, what holidays are coming up with other cultures. So that way we're able to learn about them and do the activities like if there was a craft like doing the Hanukkah and the Kwanza a day. We had to learn to give a gift a day. And then for the moon, we had a red paper that we had to write why we loved each other and why do we care about our family.

Gwen

So in schools, teachers teach all kinds of festivals to students.

Yeah, it depends on the home. When the kids come back, if they honor it too, so when they're making it a homework and things like that, because now it's a homework, so everybody's involved and everybody's learning.

Gwen

American culture is just like a melting pot(大熔炉). What do you usually do on Christmas?

Christmas, our family tradition has been making gingerbread houses (姜饼屋) where everybody will get together and will make our own gingerbread house.

Gwen

What is it? Is it a kind of candy?

It's a bread like a bread biscuit. It's like a cracker. It's made of ginger bread. It's flat and it has a little bit of sugar on it. We get icing (糖霜) like on a cake. We use that to transform the house, like build a house. Then you use gumdrops (橡皮糖) to make decorations for the house. Then you can use whatever candy you want. The traditional ones was always like coconut for the snow and icing from the cake to make a gingerbread house. And then gum drops and those little chocolate dots. We use those, too.

And gift wrapping. That's another thing. Everybody has a technique to wrap a gift. A lot of people are like “who's the best gift rapper in the family?” So gift wrapping contests. We have contests in my family, so we make things competitive and fun, and then we do this thing called $5 gift, where everybody will buy something for $5, put it in a pile, and then make a number where everybody can pick from a hat, a number, whoever has that number of picks first gets what gifts they want. You don't know what it is only you know is what you put in there. At the end, you can only swap (交换) one time. You're stuck with whatever gift you that.

Gwen

So there are several traditions on Christmas Day.

Depends onthe home. So it depends on what home and what they do as their activities.

Gwen

Do you usually have public holiday around Christmas?

Yes. A lot of people, they have Santa Claus in the mall or they are still transitioning from Thanksgiving to Christmas. They'll have an Indian festival where the Indians come and they do the rain dance. Welcoming in the new seasons. There's other things I just forgot because I haven't participated in those in a while, but there's many different other stuff that everybody does leading up to Christmas.