Why is next year a widow's year?

A year without beginning of spring is a year of blindness, which is often called a year of widowhood. It is absurd to say that the widow's year, also known as the sliding year, is not suitable for marriage, and there is no scientific basis at all. The "Widowhood Year" circulating in the society means that there is no year of beginning of spring in the whole lunar year. Take the Year of the Rooster in 2005 as an example. February 4th in the Gregorian calendar is beginning of spring, and February 9th in the Gregorian calendar is the Spring Festival.

Although the Spring Festival in 2006 was before beginning of spring, there was no beginning of spring in the lunar calendar in 2005, so 2005 was called "the year of widowhood". Widowhood year is just a coincidence between the lunar calendar and the solar calendar. Whether there is beginning of spring or not is only caused by the time difference of different calendars, which can't affect the cycle of the four seasons, let alone personal life.

The origin of the blind year

The ancients thought that the sun revolved around the earth, and one revolution was a year-today we know that it is the cycle of the earth revolving around the sun, but the ancients knew the opposite. According to scholars' research, there was a solar calendar in the Warring States Period, with ten months a year in the name of heavenly stems, thirty-six days in January and three hundred and sixty days in the name of earthly branches. Plus five to six days of "wasted time", a year is 365 days or 366 days.

In that case, the arrangement of solar terms first includes "summer solstice" and "winter solstice", followed by "vernal equinox" and "autumn equinox". The return year of the season is divided into spring and autumn, then into four seasons, spring, summer, autumn and winter, and even twenty-four solar terms. There are traces of this calendar in the ancient document Guanzi, which is related to the torch festival of Yi people and southwest ethnic minorities.

There is still a saying in Lingnan folk that "Chinese New Year is celebrated from the winter solstice to the sun", which is the remnant of folk memory of this calendar. The ancients did regard the winter solstice as New Year's Day. In this tropical year of the solar calendar, there will be no "double spring" and "blind year".