What are the customs of the Spring Festival in Meizhou, Guangdong?

Customs in Meizhou, Guangdong: Enter the New Year, celebrate the New Year, take a bath with grapefruit leaves, watch the New Year, and open the market.

1, entering the year boundary.

Lunar calendar1February 25th, people will enter the "Year Pass" and step up preparations for the new year. Everyone who goes out will rush home for the New Year. After entering the new year, we should educate our children not to scold each other and not to say unlucky things. Before and after entering the new year, we should choose an auspicious day to clean the dust and clean the house. We should clean the tables and benches in the kitchen, clean the bedding and mosquito nets, and celebrate the New Year cleanly. Of course, you have to pay the "annual price" at this time, which is much more expensive than usual; Even the fees of some service industries have started to rise.

2. New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve, that is, New Year's Eve, is the warmest and happiest day of Chinese New Year. On this morning, every family should worship bodhisattva and god. On New Year's Eve, portraits of ancestors should be hung in each hall, and red Spring Festival couplets should be posted at the gate. Red notes should be posted on barn doors, in front of livestock fences, on furniture beds and beside water tanks, which are called "sealing the year" or "becoming popular". Adults and children should take a bath, put on new clothes and celebrate the New Year cleanly. Each hall will also be decorated with tables, incense tables, chickens, fish, meat, fruits and so on. To worship their ancestors.

Step 3 take a bath with grapefruit leaves

Picking pomelo leaves in the morning, after noon, every household puts pomelo leaves in a pot to cook, and everyone should take a hot bath with pomelo leaves, which means washing away filth, "poverty" and "decay" and entering the new year cleanly. After washing pomelo leaves, put on new clothes, hats, socks and shoes, and look brand-new from head to toe. Wash dirty clothes on the same day. Therefore, washing pomelo leaves and taking a bath contains the meaning of old cloth and new one. This custom is getting weaker every year.

Step 4: keep your age

After the reunion dinner, the cooker should be cleaned to prevent vegetarianism on the first day of the first month or all day. At night, we should keep the old year, say goodbye to the old and welcome the new. Every room should be brightly lit all night. This is called "lighting the old fire". In some places, cowshed and pigsty should also be illuminated. Parents should give their children lucky money, and some places give old people lucky money.

5. "Open the market"

From the beginning of the Lunar New Year to the fifteenth day of the first month, entertainment activities are constantly going on in various places, mainly Youlong lanterns and lion dances, and some activities begin on the first and second days of the first month. Dragon lanterns and lions will be posted in advance before they arrive, and red envelopes and snacks will be given when they arrive. Dragon lanterns, lions, etc. It will not only perform in every household, but also pay New Year greetings to gods and ancestors in various temples and ancestral halls in the village. During the first Expo after the Spring Festival, all kinds of dragon lanterns, boat lanterns and lion lanterns will be performed at the Expo, which is called the "Opening Expo".