Do you like to play with kids?【小题1】Easter Day(复活节), students at Nazareth Academy in Texas, US, got a【小题2】to play with kindergarten kids.

Easter Day was on March 27 this year. It’ s a【小题3】festival in western culture. Each student paired with a kid. They did crafts(手工作品), had an Easter egg hunt(寻找彩蛋活动) and did other activities to celebrate. The school【小题4】this activity.

They spent a lot of time【小题5】kindergarten kids how to make Easter arts and crafts. Mitul Agarwal, 14, an eighth-grader, taught his partner Ruben Gonzalez how to use scissors(剪刀)【小题6】paper. This 5-year-old boy tried to get the scissor cuts【小题7】while Mitul sat next to him to help.

“Working with little kids is【小题8】. We do a lot of【小题9】about teamwork,” Mitu told the Victoria Advocate, a local newspaper. “We teach them things that we know. And we【小题10】about things that they know.”

What Sociology Can Teach UsAbout Thanksgiving

Sociologists （社会学家） believe that the celebrations practiced within any given culture serve to restate that culture’s most important values and beliefs. This theory dates back to founding sociologist Émile Durkheim and has been proved true by 【小题1】 researchers over more than a century’s time. According to sociologists, by examining a celebration, we can come to understand some 【小题2】 things about the culture in which it is practiced. In this spirit, let’s take a look at what Thanksgiving reveals about us.

It may not be much of a（n） 【小题3】 that coming together to share a meal with loved ones indicates how important relationships with friends and family are in our culture, which is far from a（n） 【小题4】 American thing. When we gather together to share in this holiday, we effectively say, “Your 【小题5】 and our relationship is important to me,” and in doing so, that relationship is restated and 【小题6】. But there are some less obvious and more interesting things going on too.

In most households across the U. S. women and girls do the work of preparing, serving, and cleaning up after the Thanksgiving meal. 【小题7】, most men and boys are likely to be watching and/or playing football. Of course, neither of these activities are exclusively gendered, but they are generally so. This means that Thanksgiving serves to 【小题8】 the distinct roles we believe men and women should play in society, and even what it means to be a man or a woman in our society today.

One of the most interesting sociological research findings is that overeating 【小题9】 with Thanksgiving illustrates American materialism and abundance. Sociologists found that the celebrations and how we talk about these experiences 【小题10】 that Thanksgiving is really about celebrating “material abundance” — having a lot of stuff, especially food, available for use.

There are a few different stories behind the origin of the modern-day Christmas tree, although not all 【小题1】 (root) in fact. Evergreen trees were 【小题2】 (actual) used by people in winter festivals for thousands of years. During the winter solstice (冬至), evergreens signified the coming of spring. As Christianity spread throughout Europe, the trees began to be used as a symbol for Christmas. In mystery plays in Germany, they were often used as props (支柱), 【小题3】 (decorate) with apples to represent the Garden of Eden.

One legend credits 16th century Protestant reformer Martin Luther for 【小题4】 (bring) the Christmas tree into homes. Luther was supposedly walking through the forest on the night before Christmas when he looked up to see stars shine through the tree 【小题5】 (branch). He was so dazzled by the 【小题6】 (beauty) sight that he told his children it reminded him of Jesus and then put up 【小题7】 tree in his own home.

But it wasn’t until the mid-19th century       【小题8】 the Christmas tree as we now know it became custom. England’s Queen Victoria encouraged her husband to decorate a tree as he had back at home in 【小题9】 is now Germany. When a drawing of the royal family with their beautiful Christmas tree 【小题10】 (appear) in a London newspaper, the tradition also became popular throughout the UK and US.