Before the Spring Festival, there was a custom of "sweeping houses" in rural areas. What day does it refer to?

Every place is different, but it is usually on the day of off-year.

Sweeping the dust, that is, sweeping the year, is actually cleaning up the family environment. Northerners call it "sweeping the house"; Southerners call it "dust removal". Traditionally, every household gets up at dawn on this day, cleaning houses and windows, washing clothes, scrubbing pots and pans, and carrying out thorough sanitation cleaning. According to the records in the Notes on Collection and Interpretation, this custom can be traced back to more than 3,000 years ago, when it was a religious ceremony to drive away epidemic ghosts and pray for well-being. After "dust" and "Chen" are homophonic, so sweeping dust means sweeping away old things, which means both the old dirt in the courtyard and the unhappiness encountered in the old year.

After twenty-three, there are only six or seven days left before the Spring Festival, and the preparations for the Spring Festival are even more enthusiastic. To thoroughly clean the room, commonly known as sweeping the dust, sweeping the dust is to go to the old and welcome the new, and remove the ominous. Every household should be carefully and thoroughly cleaned to make the windows bright and clean. Paint walls, scrub glass, put up windows, put up New Year pictures and so on. In the twelfth lunar month, every household is ready for the New Year. In Beijing, the 24th of the twelfth lunar month is usually designated as "House Sweeping Day".

Dust removal is mainly to clean the house thoroughly. Housewives usually cover the bed furniture in the room first, wrap their heads with headscarves to sweep the dust, and then sweep the walls up and down with brooms. Clean the house, scrub the tables and chairs, and clean the floor. After cleaning the house, the shops and residents' homes are completely new. The newly posted Spring Festival couplets are bright and dazzling, showing the prosperity of the world. Lifelike door gods, looking up at happy banners, exquisite window grilles, colorful New Year pictures, colorful lanterns and rich sacrifices on shrines all present a festive scene.