Can Spring Festival couplets be posted 10 days in advance?

Spring Festival couplets can be posted 10 days in advance.

It is ok to paste couplets in advance, and the customs in each place are different, but most areas are on the 29th and 30th of the twelfth lunar month, and people will paste Spring Festival couplets one after another. Therefore, generally speaking, the 28th and 29th of the twelfth lunar month are the time to concentrate on posting Spring Festival couplets. In fact, it is feasible to post couplets in advance, and there is not much stress on posting couplets.

In ancient times, people posted couplets on the 29th afternoon and 30th morning of the twelfth lunar month, which continues to this day. Nowadays, according to different customs in different places, the time for posting couplets in the New Year is slightly different. As the saying goes: "Twenty-eight, applique flowers", and there is another saying in some local folk songs: "Twenty-nine, paste the couplet (meaning paste the Spring Festival couplets)", so couplets are usually posted on the 28th and 29th of the twelfth lunar month.

There is also a saying that Spring Festival couplets are posted on the morning of New Year's Eve. The contents of Spring Festival couplets express people's good wishes for the new year. After the Spring Festival couplets are posted, they will be fired. It is said to drive away the Nian beast and bring good luck to the new year. It is possible to put up couplets between the ages of 28 and 30.

Legend of Spring Festival couplets

According to legend, in the Classic of Mountains and Seas in China's ancient mythology, there is a ghost world with a mountain in the middle, a big peach tree covering 3,000 miles, and a golden rooster on the treetop. Whenever the golden rooster crows in the morning, the wandering ghosts will rush back to the ghost domain at night. The Gate of Ghost Domain is located in the northeast of Peach Tree. There are two gods standing by the door, one is Shen Tu and the other is Lei Yu. If the ghost does something abnormal at night, Shen Tu and Lei Yu will immediately find it and catch it, and tie it up with a rope made of awn reed.

Therefore, all ghosts in the world are afraid of Shen Tu and Lei Yu, so people carve them into peach trees and put them at their doors to ward off evil spirits and prevent harm. Later, people simply carved the names of Shen Tu and Lei Yu on the mahogany board, thinking that doing so could also eliminate evil.

This kind of red board was later called "Fu Tao". In the Song Dynasty, people began to write couplets on mahogany boards. One pair of couplets did not lose the meaning of killing evil spirits, one pair of couplets expressed good wishes, and three pairs of couplets decorated the portal to show beauty. They also write couplets on red paper symbolizing happiness and auspiciousness, and stick them on both sides of doors and windows during the Spring Festival to express people's good wishes for good luck in the coming year.