Traditional ethnic festival is the product of national culture which was accumulated in long-term history. Festival causes are closely related to people’s lives. Therefore, in order to understand the cultural heritage and characteristics of a nation, we must start our research with their traditional festival culture.
Different countries, different ethnic and region have a rich and colorful culture. In recent years, western festivals constantly introduced into China, such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, etc. accepted by the public. Along with the globalization trend, the comparative study of Chinese and western festival is helpful to promote the culture communication, and strengthen the competitive power of the Chinese civilization in culture dissemination.
Ⅱ.The Introduction of Cross-cultural Background

Traditional festival is a kind of co-creation culture which is created and enjoyed by all the people in the nation, also the symbol of a national trait. This culture will naturally form a nation’s tradition and inheritance. The festival customs of different countries are established by the life of people, which contains a touching story or beautiful legend, as well as deep accumulation of historical and cultural connotation. Traditional ethnic festival is an extremely complicated social and cultural phenomenon which embodies a nation’s accumulation of personality, faith, concept, way of thinking, moral sentiment, aesthetic temperament and interest as well as the deep structure of value orientation of many national cultural and results in national spirit which grow in particular social soil. Traditional festival is the most outstanding form of nation survival mode. It is closely associated with people’s productive activities and historical development, evolution and transformation, and controlled by different material life. The development of different national traditional festival composed of different cultural system which closely related to survival form and way of life .
The striking factor which influences Chinese and western festival culture is religious beliefs. Western festivals closely related to religious because people think that the God controls everything in the world and he don’t allow people to worship other gods and idols, and people are unnecessary to worship other gods and idols. The human life is just a process, the rich life or poor life is destined by god rather than acquired, so people’s aim in Christmas is to pray to god to bless people.Because of China’s early social structure is based on the combined with nature worship and human spirit,the most important cultural characteristic of traditional Chinese Festival is full of strong secular and generic pine.It is a different form which differs from western ancient belief of God and the “humanism” of modern humanism that advocate the mutual coordination and balance between gods and people. So the ancestor worship and god worship are the same important on the Spring Festival and special emphasis on family reunions. Except that, the festival performance has different cultural implication, such as “Halloween” in Bolivia and the Ghost Festival on traditional Chinese lunar July 15,the spiritual included are completely different. In the Chinese traditional worldview, people who can’t inherit ancestor’s career, spirit or material heritage would be seen as a black sheep. While in the west, there are no such customs and institutions in the Christian civilization. In the idea of Christian civilization, inpidual is responsible only to God to get God’s forgiveness, go to heaven after death, rather than responsible for their own ancestors. 跨文化背景下中西方节日的对比研究(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_18686.html