Day of the Dead
Here’s one thing we know: Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is not a Mexican version of Halloween.
Day of the Dead originated several thousand years ago with the Aztec, Toltec, and other Nahua people, who considered mourning the dead disrespectful.
Today’s Día de los Muertos celebration is a mash-up(混聚) of pre-Hispanic religious rites and Christian feasts. It takes place on November 1 and 2—All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day on the Catholic calendar—around the time of the fall maize harvest.
Cultural heritage is not just monuments and collections of objects. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) says that cultural heritage also includes living expressions of culture—traditions—passed down from generation to generation.
Day of the Dead is an extremely social holiday that spills into streets and public squares at all hours of the day and night. Dressing up as skeletons is part of the fun. People of all ages have their faces artfully painted to resemble skulls, and, mimicking the Calavera Catrina, they don suits and fancy dresses.
| A．In 2008, UNESCO recognized the importance of Día de los Muertos by adding the holiday to its list of Intangible(无形的) Cultural Heritage of Humanity. |
| B．Some families place their dead loved one’s favorite meal on the altar(祭坛). |
| C．Though related, the two annual events differ greatly in traditions and tone. |
| D．Many revelers wear shells or other noisemakers to fuel the excitement—and also possibly to rouse the dead and keep them close during the fun. |
| E．Today, the calavera Catrina, or elegant skull, is the Day of the Dead’s most ubiquitous symbol. |
| F．For these pre-Hispanic(前西班牙时期的) cultures, death was a natural phase in life’s long continuum. |
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【推荐1】Millions of Americans are abandoning the Thanksgiving dinner table to head to the mall. While in years past, shoppers had to line up before dawn on Black Friday to get easy access to holiday deals, a number of retailers(销售商) are now keeping their doors open before the dishes have been cleared from the holiday feast. And many are more than willing to skip football to shop until they drop. Walmart, Amazon and J.C. Penney are among the retailers who began rolling out deals days or even weeks earlier in the race to win shoppers.
Outside Lord & Taylor on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, Janna Holly, 21, outlined her battle plan. ＂We normally wait until Black Friday to shop for the Christmas gifts. This year, I plan on going to Macy’s, Forever 21 and Sephora," said the college student from Austin, Texas. "My holiday budget should not be that much, because I have to pay for tuition, but I’ll probably do a lot of shopping anyway.＂
Marlina Kozdra of West Orange, N.J., came to New York City to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with her family, but then went hunting for deals. ＂Shopping on Thanksgiving is fine as long as you get to do it with your family," the 34-year-old stay-at-home mom said.
Though the Best Buy in Midtown Manhattan had barricades(路障) outside for the expected crowds of holiday shoppers, only Dag Estrada was waiting there at 1 p.m. on Thanksgiving. He said he’d camped out overnight to buy a television. The store opened at 5 p.m. ＂I do this every year. It’s a tradition," he said, explaining that his shopping list sometimes includes tablets and computers, too. "It makes me feel like a New Yorker. Estrada said he starts planning where to shop three weeks in advance by researching sales in newspapers and looking online. Then, he bargain-hunts alone. ＂No love, no cat, no dog, just you and deals,＂he said.
1. What does the underlined sentence in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．Shoppers shouldn’t give up their dessert. |
| B．The sports trade is very popular on holiday. |
| C．Many Americans rush to the shopping center to buy football. |
| D．Many retailers compete to get their share of the holiday business. |
| A．Its variety. | B．Its price. | C．Its origin. | D．Its quality. |
| A．To look for a job. |
| B．To go shopping with her friends. |
| C．To celebrate the holiday with her family. |
| D．To have a free taste of the Thanksgiving dessert. |
| A．He replaces the household items regularly. |
| B．He would like to go camping during holidays. |
| C．He hunts for bargains at a yard sale. |
| D．He is a discount seeker during holiday shopping season. |
【推荐2】Kwanzaa may be a festival celebrated by millions of African Americans and pan-Africans, but it has only been around for a few decades (十年). Introduced to the United States in 1966 as a ceremony to welcome the first harvest to the home, the festival, which takes place from December 26 to January 1, is a celebration of life, unity, family, and culture.
Featuring feasts, music and dance, and a devotion and recommitment to different principles (信条), the festival was created in the middle of the Black Freedom Movement, at a time when it was felt that cultural grounding was needed.
Dr. Maulana Karenga, professor and chairman of Black Studies at California State University in Long Beach, is responsible for bringing the festival to life. After the Watts violence in L.A., Dr. Karenga searched for ways to strengthen the African-American community. He paired the practices with traditions of several different harvest celebrations on the African continent, and although it is celebrated around the Christmas period, it perhaps has more similarities to Thanksgiving or the Yam Festival in Ghana and Nigeria.
There are five common sets of values that are central to the week-long activities: ingathering, reverence, commemoration, recommitment, and celebration. There are seven principles of Kwanzaa, meaning first fruits in Kiswahili, a language spoken in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. The first fruit celebrations appear in ancient and modern times in classical African civilizations.
These seven principles are known as Umoja, meaning unity; kujichagulia, self-determination; ujima, collective work, and responsibility; ujamaa, cooperative economics; nia, purpose; kuumba, creativity; and Imani, faith. There are seven candles used during the festival, and like, the Jewish Hanukkah, these candles are used to represent the principles.
On December 31, participants celebrate with a plentiful meal, often featuring good meals from various African countries.
The number of Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa has changed greatly over the years, and with as many as six million getting involved in the 1980s, Kwanzaa became a mainstream holiday. Now, however, numbers have paled, but it still remains an important cultural touchstone (试金石) for many African American communities.
1. What activity can be included during the celebration of Kwanzaa?| A．Creating a piece of music. | B．Having a plentiful meal. |
| C．Giving and receiving gifts. | D．Enjoying an art exhibition. |
| A．He started the Watts violence in Los Angeles. |
| B．He created five common sets of values. |
| C．He found ways to practice African traditions. |
| D．He strengthened the unity of neighbors. |
| A．Kwanzaa is a festival across the world. |
| B．Africans are considered important in the U.S.. |
| C．Kwanzaa is an important cultural symbol. |
| D．Kwanzaa is less popular among young Africans. |
| A．A festival: The Culture Cross the World |
| B．African Americans: An Important Part of Americans |
| C．Principles: The Focus of a Festival |
| D．Kwanzaa: The African Celebration of Unity and Culture |
【推荐3】What are pillows really stuffed with? Not physically, but symbolically? The question occurred to me with the photos in the news and social media from the 50 cities around the world that staged public celebrations for International Pillow Fight Day. Armed with nothing more than bring-our-own sacrificial cushions, strangers struck heavily each other in playful feather from Amsterdam to Atlanta, Warsaw to Washington DC. But why? Is there anything more to this delightful celebration?
As a cultural sign, the pillow is deceptively soft. Since at least the 16th Century, the humble pillow has been given unexpected meanings. The Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu tells a famous story about a wise man who meets a depressed young scholar at an inn and offers him a magic pillow filled with the most vivid dreams of a seemingly more fulfilling life. When the young man awakens to discover that his happy 50-year dream has in fact come and gone in the short space of an afternoon’s nap, our impression of the pillow’s power shifts from wonder to terror.
Subsequent writers have likewise seized upon the pillow. When the 19th-Century English novelist Charlotte Bronte poetically observed “a ruffled (不平的) mind makes a restless pillow”, she didn’t just change the expected order of the adjectives and nouns, but instead she made unclear the boundaries between mind and matter — the thing resting and the thing rested upon.
It’s a trick perhaps Bronte learned from the Renaissance philosopher Montaigne, who once insisted that “ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head”. On Montaigne’s thinking, intelligence and happiness confront each other forever in a pillow fight that only one can win.
With the words of Tang. Bronte, and Montaigne, we can perhaps more easily measure the attraction of the global pillow fight. Like a ritual of release, the annual international pillow fight amounts to a kind of cleansing, a brushing off of daily worries: an emptying of the world’s collective mind. Rather than a launch-pad for weightless rest, the pillow is a symbol of heavy thought: an anchor that drags the world’s soul down — one that must be lightened.
1. The example of Tang Xianzu is used to illustrate that ________.| A．pillows give people satisfactory dreams |
| B．dreams are always wonderful while the real world is cruel |
| C．people’s impression of pillows changes from wonder to terror |
| D．pillows symbolically convey the meaning in contrast to their soft appearance |
| A．wrote poems about pillows |
| B．regarded pillows as reflections of our minds |
| C．shared the same viewpoint as Tang Xianzu on pillows |
| D．was likely to have been influenced by the thoughts of the Renaissance |
| A．pillows give us comfort |
| B．pillows make people more intelligent |
| C．people with too many thoughts have less inner peace |
| D．people can easily fall asleep when they know nothing |
| A．Because it is a ritual release. |
| B．Because it makes life delightful. |
| C．Because it comforts restless minds. |
| D．Because it contains a profound meaning of life. |
