世界节日趣谈（1-2）.doc

Introduction
引言
A friend of mine has a favorite story about Passover.
There were going to be thirteen at the Seder table that year, a fact that filled my friend with superstitious dread. It was asking for bad luck on a holiday already fraught with warnings, omens, out-bursts, and plagues.
“Couldn’t we just not invite the Provines?” my friend pleaded with her mother, brutally targeting the only four no relatives on the guest list. “Then we’d be nine.”
“Are you crazy?” her mother shrieked indignantly. The three Provine children were fatherless, after all. “This is Passover.”
Which was funny because on all other nights my friend’s mother seethed with a xenophobic fervor, her home a fortress, her table with its three lonely place settings a margarine-redolent sanctum sanctorum to which no magic word on earth could buy the wayfarer an introduction.
No magic word, that is, except Passover. At the onset of the holiday, my friend’s mother waxed suddenly warm, even jolly, oozing the milk of human kindness the way wooden statues of the Madonna are sometimes said to cry or bleed.
That’s what I love about holidays: how they transform us, how they remind us of the things we hold sacred. Holidays affirm our traditions and proclaim our loves as stalwartly as pushpins in a map. Like

1 Passover (犹太人的)逾越节 2 seder 逾越节家宴 12 seethed with a xenophobic fervor 充满了恐惧外人的情绪 13 three… place settings 三份……餐具 13 margarine – redolent 散发着人造黄油气味 13-14 sanc – tum sanctorum 私室 14 magic word 咒语、巫术 14-15 could buy the wayfarer n introduction 能使外人(旅行者)进入 17-18 oozing the milk of human kindness 流露出人类的善良天性 18 Madonna 圣母马利亚 22 stalwartly 坚定地
Body piercing and canapés, holidays set us apart from other species, turning every celebrant into a vessel for ritual, bonding us with every other celebrant throughout the world and throughout time. Holidays are collective dreams, wishes, fantasies, and myths made glorious flesh; and to share other people’s holidays is to trade dreams. Holidays - h