The grinches who stole Christmas

A petition calling on netizens to be less excited about foreign festivals like Christmas was publicized by 10 philosophy and education PhD students from China's top universities last week. The petition, calling for strengthening Chinese cultural dominance, has aroused much controversy. Here are excerpts from media comments.

Jiangnan Times: Western holidays are not great scourges and we do not have to worry too much.

The 10 students from China's most authoritative universities including Beida, Tsinghua and People's University who publicized the petition hope to "wake up the Chinese people to resist Western cultural invasion."

When the celebration of Western holidays are getting more and more popular in China, the traditional Chinese festivals are facing an awkward situation. Many people are advocating the protection of traditional festivals or resistance to West festivals from the angle of protecting national culture and resisting invasion of foreign culture. But all these just go against the nature of cultural development and show an unconfidence to our own traditional culture.

It is true that Western festivals such as Christmas, Valentine's Day and Thanksgiving are overly favoured here. On the one hand, this is connected with some people's blind worship in foreign things; on the other hand, this is because foreign festivals focus on spiritual connotation while Chinese festivals are normally more pragmatic.

The traditional customs to celebrate Chinese festivals often relate to food and drink, and were formed in a time when materials were not sufficient. Today when people worry less about food and drink, they are more attracted by Western festivals developed from spiritual factors.

It goes against the rule of cultural development to blindly reject foreign cultures. Many festivals in Japan and Republic of Korea were actually transplanted from ancient China and still popular today. These have not affected the development of their cultures and economies, nor affected them getting more powerful and prosperous.

There is no need to resist celebrating foreign festivals.

www.xinhuanet.com.cn: More efforts should be made to strengthen Chinese cultural dominance.

The petition has poured cold water on the warm atmosphere of celebrating Christmas in China. But the power of these 10 students is just too weak in front of the advocating for Western festivals.

Such a trifle effort may not achieve any result as the big fanfare for Christmas does not come from collective unconsciousness but is a conscious choice against the background of a big world trend.

No matter whether non-Western nations are willing or not, they are all included in a global value system. Economic development, or developmentism, is the highest standard in this system. The culture of the developed always prevails.

Though very weak, the students' effort is significant. It is because Chinese economy may not catch up with the West in a rather long time, if we lose dominance in culture in our own country, we will get lost totally.

Without cultural identification, a nation may lose its confidence, its ability to protect national interest or explore its own way of development.

Last but not least, joint efforts should be made to build a harmonious society in China. Though we cannot catch up with wealthy Western countries in a short period, a harmonious society will help enhance people's identification to our national culture.

Changjiang Times: Tolerance is needed towards the celebration of Christmas. There have been many hot discussions on whether we should celebrate Western festivals. But when scholars and cultural elites are advocating resistance, the public is still warmly celebrating these holidays. The basic reason is that the life styles and concepts of Chinese people are taking earth-shaking changes. This is just natural as China is having more and more connections with the outside world. It is an inevitable result in an era of opening.

Our national culture will not fade only because people are celebrating foreign holidays. History has proved that opening to the outside world will only make a nation more independent and stronger.

This petition by the PhD students only reminds us of those enclosed days in history. A narrow, biased and conservative mind goes against the value of the time and may bring up autocracy, coercion and harm to freedom and rights.

To open to the world is an inevitable trend. Of course we should try our best to promote our cultural heritage, rediscover traditional cultural connotation and keep the independence of our national culture.

Source: China Daily