2018雅思考试听力材料：An American Christmas

 　 "We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas…"Have you heard that song? Yup! It's Christmas time! This Christmas, I stayed with my "host family"1. It was an amazing experience to see how a typical American family would celebrate the biggest western festival of the year.

　　Christmas, like our Spring Festival, has a meaning in itself. Christmas Day, which is on December 25, is the birthday of Jesus Christ--the son of God. That's why it is called Christmas. On that day, Christians would get together with their families to celebrate the birthday of Jesus. But nowadays, the religious meaning of Christmas has become less emphasized. To many families, it is just a time of family reunion and the ever-exciting present-giving.

　　Our school had been on winter vacation since December 11. I stayed at my friend, Stephen Stapczynski's house--his family was my "host family". Although Christmas was still more than ten days ahead, the festive spirit had already been teeming everywhere. The Christmas tree had already been set up, and on every windowsill, there were Christmas lights. On the first day I arrived at their house, Stephen and I helped Mrs. Stapczynski put decorations on the Christmas tree. The tree looked so nice with all the lights on and the beautiful ornaments dangling from its branches.

　　As Christmas came closer, the whole neighborhood had made preparations too. Some people would hold parties at their houses, inviting all their neighbors to come. So every night, if you went out, you would see a long line of cars parked in front of some house--a party's on!

　　What's more, the Christmas decorations that some people put on their windows and in gardens were just amazing. On one night, we went out in our car for a "tour of lights". There was one street that was so famous for its lights that it got its way into the local paper. We had a hard time finding the well-hidden street, but it turned out to be worth the effort. Lights shone brightly in front of nearly every house, on trees, bushes, doors, windows…everywhere, taking different shapes, making it seem almost like daytime. Huge inflatable figures in the front gardens were waving to us: there were Santa Clauses2, of course, chuckling merrily away; and there were also other Christmas figures, like Rudolph3--the red-nosed reindeer--with his red nose gleaming ever so brightly; even Bart Simpson--a character in the famous comedy The Simpsons--had joined the jolly party, wearing a Santa's hat. The street set off a lot of "ooh"s and "aah"s inside the car.4 When we left, there was a line of cars in the street, all there to see the lights.