The custom of celebrating the Spring Festival in China.

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 the development of thousands of years, and many of them have been passed down to this day.

1, dust removal

"On the 24th day of the twelfth lunar month, dust sweeps the house". According to Lv 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 original intention is to sweep away all bad luck and bad luck. This custom places people's desire to break the old and create the new, as well as their prayers to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new. Whenever the Spring Festival comes, every household should clean the environment, clean all kinds of electrical appliances, 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.

2. Post Spring Festival couplets

Spring Festival couplets are also called door couplets, spring stickers, couplets, couplets and peach symbols. They depict the background of the times and express good wishes with neat, dual, concise and delicate 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 originated 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 wrote a monograph on Spring Festival couplets, discussing the origin of couplets and the characteristics of various works.

There are many kinds of Spring Festival couplets, which can be divided into doorways, frame pairs, horizontal stripes, spring stripes and square fights according to their concession places. The "door core" is attached to the center of the upper end of the door panel; The "door frame pair" is attached to the left and right door frames; "Cross-dressing" is a crossbar attached to the plum door; "Spring strips" are posted in corresponding places according to different contents; "Dou Jin", also known as "door leaf", is a square diamond, often attached to furniture and screen walls.

3. stick grilles and the word "Fu"

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 incisively and vividly, and decorate festivals with colorful colors.

While pasting Spring Festival couplets, some people want to paste 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". Folks also elaborate the word "Fu" into various patterns, such as longevity, longevity peach, carp yue longmen, abundant grains, dragons and phoenixes, etc.

4. New Year pictures

Hanging New Year pictures during the Spring Festival is also very common in urban and rural areas. Thick black and thick color New Year pictures add a lot of prosperity, joy and 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. Some New Year pictures workshops have produced classic color New Year pictures, such as Fu Lushou's Samsung, God bless the people, the bumper harvest of grains, the prosperity of six animals, and the blessing of welcoming the spring, in order 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; Three schools of New Year pictures have been formed, each with its own characteristics.

5, shou sui

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 records can be found in the local chronicles of the Western Jin Dynasty: on New Year's Eve, all parties gave gifts to each other, which was called "feeding the elderly"; Wine and food are invited, which is called "not old"; Young and old get together to drink and wish a complete song called "age division"; Everyone stays up all night, waiting for dawn. This 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, which symbolizes 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 "Shou Sui": "Cold words and winter snow, warm with spring breeze". To this day, people are used to celebrating the New Year's Eve.