1 . 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.

4 . 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.

World Book and Copyright Day is a celebration to promote the     1     (enjoy)of books and reading. Each year, on 23 April, celebrations take place all over the world to recognize different types of books-a link between the past and the future, a bridge between generations and across cultures.

23 April is a     2     (symbol)date in world literature. It is the date on     3     several prominent authors, William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all     4     (die). This date was a natural choice for UNESCO’s General Conference,     5     (hold)in Paris in 1995, to pay a worldwide tribute to books and authors on this date, encouraging everyone to access books.

Books have long embodied(体现)the human capacity to conjure up(使在脑海中显现)worlds, both real and imagined,     6     (give)voice to the diversity of human experience. They help us share ideas, obtain information, and inspire admiration     7     different cultures, enabling far-reaching forms of dialogue between people across space and time.

Storytelling is     8     incredibly effective tool     9     it comes to educating younger generations. Indeed, books are vital vehicles to access, transmit and promote education, science, culture, and information worldwide. On World Book and Copyright Day, we celebrate their captivating (迷人的) power     10     (spark)innovation, generate knowledge and change minds.