The custom of the Spring Festival is very simple to write! ~

Spring Festival is an ancient festival in China, and it is also the most important festival in a year. How to celebrate this festival has formed some relatively fixed customs and habits in thousands of years of historical development, many of which have been passed down to this day.

sweep the dust

"On the 24th of the twelfth lunar month, dust sweeps the house". According to Lu Chunqiu, China had the custom of sweeping dust during the Spring Festival in the Yao and Shun era. According to the folk saying: Because of the homonym of "dust" and "Chen", sweeping dust in the Spring Festival means "getting rid of the old and not being new", and its intention is to sweep away all bad luck and bad luck. This custom has placed people's desire to break through the old and create new ones and their prayers to bid farewell to the old and usher in the new. Whenever the Spring Festival comes, every household should clean the environment, clean all kinds of utensils, remove and wash bedding curtains, sweep six yards, dust cobwebs and dredge culverts in open channels. Everywhere is filled with the joyful atmosphere of cleaning and welcoming the Spring Festival cleanly.

paste up Spring Festival couplets

Spring Festival couplets are also called door couplets, spring stickers, couplets, Spring Festival couplets and peach symbols. They depict the background of the times and express good wishes with neat, dual, concise and exquisite words, which are unique literary forms in China. Every Spring Festival, no matter in urban or rural areas, every household should choose a pair of red Spring Festival couplets and stick them on the door to add festive atmosphere to the festival. This custom began in the Song Dynasty and was popular in the Ming Dynasty. By the Qing Dynasty, the ideological and artistic quality of Spring Festival couplets had been greatly improved. Liang Zhangju's monograph Poetry of Spring Festival couplets discusses the origin of couplets and the characteristics of various works.

There are many kinds of Spring Festival couplets, which can be divided into door heart, frame pair, cross string, spring strip and bucket square according to the place of use. The "door core" is attached to the center of the upper end of the door panel; The "frame pair" is attached to the left and right door frames; "Cross-dressing" is attached to the crossbar of the door; "Spring strips" are posted in corresponding places according to different contents; "Doodle brocade", also called "door leaf", is a square diamond, which is often attached to furniture and screen walls.

Stick the window grilles and the word "fu" upside down.

In the folk, people also like to stick various paper-cuts on the windows-window grilles. Window grilles not only set off the festive atmosphere, but also integrate decoration, appreciation and practicality. Paper-cutting is a very popular folk art in China, which has been loved by people for thousands of years. Because it is often pasted on the window, it is also called "window grilles". With its unique generalization and exaggeration, window grilles show auspicious things and good wishes to the fullest, adding luster to the festival.

While putting up Spring Festival couplets, some people have to put the word "Fu" on doors, walls and lintels. Sticking the word "Fu" during the Spring Festival is a long-standing folk custom in China. The word "Fu" symbolizes good luck and wishes for a happy life and a bright future. In order to fully reflect this yearning and wish, some people simply put the word "Fu" upside down, indicating that "Fu has arrived" and "Fu has arrived". Others elaborate the word "Fu" into various patterns, such as longevity, longevity peach, carp yue longmen, abundant grains, dragons and phoenixes, and so on.

New Year picture

Hanging New Year pictures during the Spring Festival is also very common in urban and rural areas. Thick black and colorful New Year pictures add a lot of festive atmosphere to thousands of families. New Year pictures are an ancient folk art in China, which reflects people's simple customs and beliefs and places their hopes on the future. New Year pictures, like Spring Festival couplets, originated from "door gods". With the rise of block printing, the content of New Year pictures is not limited to monotonous themes such as door gods, but has become rich and colorful. In some New Year pictures workshops, classic color New Year pictures, such as Fu Lushou's Samsung, God bless the people, bumper harvest of grains, prosperity of six animals and welcoming the New Year, have been produced to meet people's good wishes of celebrating and praying for the New Year. There are three important producing areas of Chinese New Year pictures: Taohuawu in Suzhou, Yangliuqing in Tianjin and Weifang in Shandong; Chinese New Year pictures have formed three schools, each with its own characteristics.

The earliest existing collection of New Year pictures in China is the Southern Song Dynasty woodcut New Year pictures, which show four ancient beauties: Wang Zhaojun, Zhao Yanfei, Ban Ji and Lvzhu. The most popular among the people is the New Year pictures of marrying mice. It depicts an interesting scene in which a mouse marries a bride according to human custom. In the early years of the Republic of China, Zheng of Shanghai combined calendars with New Year pictures. This is a new form of New Year pictures. This two-in-one New Year picture later developed into a calendar, which became popular all over the country.

stay up late or all night on New Year's Eve

Keeping the Lunar New Year's Eve is one of the most important activities, and the custom of keeping the Lunar New Year's Eve has a long history. The earliest record can be found in the Local Records of the Western Jin Dynasty: on New Year's Eve, all parties give gifts to each other, which is called "rejuvenation"; Wine and food are invited, which is called "not old"; When young people and old people get together to drink and wish a complete song, it is called "age division"; Everyone stays up all night, waiting for the dawn, which is the so-called "shou sui".

On New Year's Eve, the whole family get together, eat New Year's Eve, light candles or oil lamps, sit around the stove and chat, wait for the time to bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new year, and keep vigil all night, symbolizing driving away all evil diseases and epidemics and expecting good luck in the new year. This custom gradually became popular. At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong, wrote a poem of "Shounian": "The cold retreats from the winter snow, and the warmth comes from the spring breeze". Until today, people are used to keeping the old year and welcoming the new year.

In ancient times, observing the age has two meanings: the old man's observing the age means "resigning from the old", which means cherishing time; Young people keep their age in order to prolong the life of their parents. Since the Han Dynasty, the time for the alternation of the old and new years is generally at midnight.

firecracker

There is a folk saying in China called "Open the door and set off firecrackers". That is to say, when the new year comes, the first thing for every household to open the door is to set off firecrackers to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new. Firecrackers are a specialty of China, also known as "firecrackers", "firecrackers" and "firecrackers". Its origin is very early, and it has a history of more than two thousand years. Setting off firecrackers can create a festive and lively atmosphere, which is an entertainment activity in festivals and can bring happiness and good luck to people. With the passage of time, firecrackers are more and more widely used, and there are more and more varieties and colors. Every major festival and happy event celebration, as well as marriage, building a house, opening a business, etc. Firecrackers should be set off to celebrate and create good luck. At present, Liuyang, Hunan, Foshan and Dongyao, Yichun and Pingxiang, Jiangxi, Wenzhou, Zhejiang and other regions are famous fireworks towns in China. The firecrackers produced have many colors and high quality, which are not only sold well all over the country, but also exported to all parts of the world.

Make a new year call

On the first day of the new year, people get up early, put on the most beautiful clothes, dress neatly, go out to visit relatives and friends, and wish each other good luck in the coming year. There are many ways to pay New Year greetings, some of which are led by the same clan leader from door to door. Some colleagues invited several people to pay New Year greetings; Others get together to congratulate each other, which is called "collective worship". Because it is time-consuming and laborious to pay New Year greetings at home, some elites and scholars later congratulated each other with stickers, thus developing the later "New Year greeting cards".

When paying New Year greetings during the Spring Festival, the younger generation should first pay New Year greetings to their elders and wish them a long and healthy life. The elders can distribute the lucky money prepared in advance to the younger generation. It is said that lucky money can suppress evil souls, because "old" and "special" are homophonic, and the younger generation can spend a year safely with lucky money. There are two kinds of lucky money, one is to put the colored rope in the shape of a dragon at the foot of the bed, which is recorded in "Yanjing Year"; The other is the most common, that is, parents wrap the money distributed to their children in red paper. Lucky money can be distributed in public after the younger generation pays New Year's greetings, or it can be secretly put under the child's pillow by parents when the child falls asleep on New Year's Eve. It is still popular for elders to give lucky money to younger generations.

Eating custom in Spring Festival

In ancient agricultural society, housewives began to prepare food for the New Year from the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. Because curing bacon takes a long time, it must be prepared as soon as possible. Many provinces in China have the custom of curing bacon, of which Guangdong Province is the most famous.

Steamed rice cakes, because of their homophonic "high age" and diverse tastes, have almost become a must-have food for every household. The styles of rice cakes are square yellow and white rice cakes, which symbolize gold and silver and express the meaning of making a fortune in the New Year.

The taste of rice cakes varies from place to place. Beijingers like to eat red date rice cakes, hundred fruit rice cakes and white rice cakes made of glutinous rice or yellow rice. Hebei people like to add jujube, red beans and mung beans to rice cakes and steam them together. In northern Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and other places, it is customary to eat fried rice cakes with yellow rice flour during the New Year. Some rice cakes are stuffed with bean paste and jujube paste, while Shandong people steam rice cakes with yellow rice and red dates. The rice cakes in the north are mainly sweet, steamed or fried, and some people simply eat them with sugar. The rice cakes in the south are sweet and salty. For example, the rice cakes in Suzhou and Ningbo are made of japonica rice and have a light taste. Besides steaming and frying, you can also slice and fry or cook soup. Sweet rice cake is made of glutinous rice flour with white sugar, lard, rose, osmanthus, mint, mashed vegetables and other ingredients. They are fine in workmanship and can be steamed directly or fried with egg white.

The night before the real China New Year is called Reunion Night. Wanderers who leave home have to travel thousands of miles to go home. During the Spring Festival, the whole family will sit around and wrap jiaozi. Jiaozi's practice is to use flour to make dumpling wrappers first, and then use leather bags to fill them. The contents of fillings are varied, and all kinds of meat, eggs, seafood and seasonal vegetables can be stuffed in. The orthodox jiaozi method is to cook them in clear water and then mix them with vinegar, minced garlic and vegetables after fishing. There are also ways to fry jiaozi and roast jiaozi. Because the word "he" in dough mixing means "he"; Jiaozi's "Jiao" and "Jiao" are homophonic, and both "He" and "Jiao" have the meaning of reunion, so jiaozi is used to symbolize the reunion of acacia; It is very auspicious to make friends with older people; In addition, jiaozi is shaped like an ingot, and eating jiaozi in the New Year also has the auspicious meaning of "making a fortune". All the families get together to pack jiaozi, so it's fun to celebrate the Spring Festival.