What is the Spring Festival and what are the customs?

Spring Festival is the first day of the Lunar New Year in China (the first day of the first lunar month), also known as the Lunar New Year, commonly known as "Chinese New Year". In the traditional sense, the Spring Festival refers to the kitchen sacrifice in La Worship from the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, with New Year's Eve and the first day of the first lunar month as the climax. The Spring Festival has a long history. According to records, people in China have been celebrating the Spring Festival for more than 4,000 years. It was initiated by Yu Shun. One day more than two thousand years BC, Shun became emperor and led his men to worship heaven and earth. Since then, people have regarded this day as the beginning of a year, that is, the first day of the first month.

The Spring Festival has different names in different times. The pre-Qin period was called "Yuan Day", "Geng Year" and "Fairy Year". In the Han Dynasty, it was also called "Three Dynasties", "Sui Dan", "Zheng Dan" and "Zhengri". Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties were called Chen Yuan, Yuan Ri, Fuehrer and Sui Dynasty. In the Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, it was called New Year's Day, Yuan, New Year's Day and Singapore dollar. In the Qing Dynasty, it was always called "New Year's Day" or "Yuan Day". 19 12 When Sun Yat-sen became the provisional president of the Republic of China in Nanjing, he announced that he would change to the general Gregorian calendar and decided to take 1 9 1 year 1 month 1 day as the first year of the Republic of China/kloc-. On the eve of the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC),1September 27th, 949, the first plenary session of China People's Political Consultative Conference decided to adopt the international calendar year in People's Republic of China (PRC). In order to distinguish the two "years" of the solar calendar and the lunar calendar, and because there are 24 solar terms in a year, the 1 month 1 day in the solar calendar is called "New Year's Day", commonly known as the solar year; The first day of the first lunar month was officially renamed as "Spring Festival", commonly known as the Lunar New Year.

Spring Festival is an ancient festival in China. It is also the most important festival of the year. How to celebrate this festival has formed relatively fixed customs and habits in thousands of years of historical development.

There is a custom of sweeping dust before New Year's Eve. "On the 24th of the twelfth lunar month, I sprinkled glutinous rice balls and swept the house." According to Lu's "Spring and Autumn Annals", during the Yao and Shun period, China had the custom of sweeping dust during the Spring Festival. According to the folk saying, "dust" and "Chen" are homophonic. Sweeping the dust in the Spring Festival means "getting rid of the old and getting rid of the new", and its original intention is to sweep away all unlucky and bad luck. This custom has placed people's desire to break the old and create new ones and 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.

After sweeping the dust, people began to put up prosperous Spring Festival couplets at home. 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.

In northern China, in addition to pasting couplets, there is also the custom of stick grilles and pasting the word "Fu" upside down. People stick various paper-cut patterns on the windows-window grilles.

While putting up Spring Festival couplets, some people have to put large and small "Fu" characters 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 desire. Some people simply put the word "Fu" upside down, which is homophonic, meaning "Fu has arrived" and "Fu has arrived". Others have carefully made the word "Fu" into various patterns, such as longevity, longevity peach, carp yue longmen, abundant grains, dragons and phoenixes, and so on.

There are also door-sticking gods and New Year pictures in the custom of Spring Festival. The "peach symbol" referred to in ancient times is the door god. According to Ma Jian's "The Beginning of Continuation", "Defender" is the image of "Shen Tu and Lei Yu" painted on the mahogany board. According to Customs Tong, "Lei Yu and Shen Tu are Kundi's two brothers who can pretend to be ghosts". In the Tang Dynasty, new changes took place in the keeper. Emperor Taizong was ill and was very scared when he heard ghosts at night. After dawn, he told his ministers that the founding general Qin He was standing at the door, armed to the teeth, armed with swords and hammers. That night, Emperor Taizong never dreamed of ghosts again. Because Emperor Taizong hoped for long-term stability and didn't want the two generals to stand often, he ordered the painter to draw their portraits and hang them at the palace gate, which was called the door god. Later, people imitated this practice and put a door god on the door during the Spring Festival to ward off evil spirits.

New Year pictures have a long history. The earliest New Year pictures in China are "Door God", which are legendary figures Shen Tu and Lei Yu. Others draw a statue of Cheng qin, an ancient warrior, at the gate of the temple, or draw a tiger at the gate. In the Tang Dynasty, Qin Qiong, Weichi Gong and Zhong Kui were painted as door gods. After the Song Dynasty, New Year pictures with the theme of women such as Wang Zhaojun and Zhao appeared. In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, there appeared three famous folk woodblock New Year pictures: Yangliuqing in Tianjin, Taohuawu in Suzhou and Weifang in Shandong.

China's New Year pictures have various forms, wide themes and different customs. There are dozens of forms, such as middle strips, screen strips, window tops, kitchen paintings and banners. The themes are landscape flowers and birds, opera characters, folk customs and so on. As far as artistic style is concerned, Tianjin Yangliuqing New Year pictures are famous for their exquisiteness and elegance. The New Year pictures in Weifang, Shandong and Taohuawu, Suzhou are strong and simple. New Year pictures in Beijing and Northwest China are famous for their boldness and boldness. In addition, Zhangzhou New Year Pictures, Foshan New Year Pictures, Mianzhu New Year Pictures in Sichuan and Shanghai Calendar New Year Pictures are all unique and have their own advantages. The Mianzhu New Year pictures in Sichuan are still mainly printed by the old door gods.

When the home is dressed up, there will be an atmosphere of the New Year. One of the most important annual custom activities on New Year's Eve is celebrating the New Year's Eve, which has a long history. The earliest records can be found in the local customs of Jin people and Zhou dynasty: on New Year's Eve, all parties give gifts to each other, which is called "feeding the elderly"; Wine and food invite each other and say "don't be old"; Young and old gather to drink, wishing a whole song, which is called "age division"; Everyone stays up all night waiting for dawn, which is called "guarding the age".

On New Year's Eve, the whole family get together, eat New Year's Eve and light candles or oil lamps. Sitting around the fire, chatting, waiting for the moment to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, and keeping vigil all night symbolizes driving away all evil diseases and looking forward to good luck in the new year. To this day, people are used to celebrating the New Year's Eve. 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 stay old in order to prolong the life of their parents. In recent years, with the development of science and technology and the popularization of television, it has become a new folk custom for urban and rural people to watch CCTV Spring Festival Gala with their families on New Year's Eve, which is also a concrete manifestation of harmonious China.

The conservative year is to bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new year. During the Chinese New Year, there is a saying in China called "setting off firecrackers". That is to say, the first thing for every household to open the door is to set off firecrackers and say goodbye to the old and welcome the new with firecrackers. Firecracker is a specialty of China, also known as "Firecracker", "Firecracker" and "Firecracker". 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 a kind of entertainment in festivals and can bring happiness and good luck to people. This is the first day of the new year. On the first day of the new year, people go out early, put on the most beautiful clothes, dress neatly, visit relatives and friends and wish each other good luck. There are various ways to pay New Year greetings. Some are householders leading several people to pay New Year greetings from house to house, some are colleagues inviting several people to pay New Year greetings, and some people get together to congratulate each other. This is called "group worship". Because it is time-consuming and laborious to pay New Year greetings at home, some elites and scholars later congratulated each other with famous cards, which developed into the later "New Year 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 health and longevity. The elders can distribute the lucky money prepared in advance to the younger generation. It is said that lucky money can kill evil spirits, because "old" and "special" are homophonic, and the younger generation can spend the first year safely when they get lucky money. There are two kinds of lucky money: one is to put colored rope in the shape of Jackie Chan and put it at the foot of the bed, which is recorded in Yanjing Yearbook; The other is the most common, that is, parents wrap the money distributed to their children in red paper. The lucky money can be given in public after the younger generation pays New Year's greetings, or it can be quietly put under the child's pillow on New Year's Eve when the child is asleep. It is still very popular for elders to give lucky money to younger generations.