Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional customs - Feelings about the Spring Festival

Feelings about the Spring Festival

In today's focus on ecological civilization, reviewing the ancient rituals about the Spring Festival can help us perceive the essence of traditional Chinese culture more y and enrich our feelings about the Spring Festival a bit.

New Year's Eve!

New Year's Eve, in the hearts of the Chinese people is very heavy, but the meaning is getting thinner and thinner, now, New Year's Eve is even as simple as the dissatisfaction of the Spring Festival, the nagging of the Spring Festival Gala, and simply a New Year's Eve dinner and a few hangs of fireworks.

Now, New Year's is mostly seen as a folklore, in fact, in ancient times, New Year's is not only a folklore, but also an important part of political life, is the most sacred and solemn days of the year, and of course, the most joyful days of the people.

The farming tradition, doomed to the Chinese people attach great importance to the sky, earth, rain, and all this depends on the season. The Spring Festival is the beginning of the change of the year's sequence, from the Zhou Dynasty, about the Spring Festival has formed a complex study. Due to the absence of this historical memory, we no longer understand the true meaning of the Spring Festival, and the sacredness and joy that we feel from it is naturally much less than that of the ancients.

The unity of celestial and human beings is the highest value of traditional Chinese people, and the soul of the Spring Festival. Without this concept, it would be difficult to understand many of the behaviors in Spring Festival folklore. The ancients believed that only under the guidance and care of the natural gods could human beings achieve a secure and orderly life, so at the beginning of the year, sacrificing to the gods of heaven and earth and expressing reverence for them became the most important political activity of the state. According to the Records of Rites, three days before the first day of spring, the Son of Heaven began to fast, and on the day of the first day of spring, the Son of Heaven would personally lead the three dukes, the nine ministers, the vassals and the great doctors to the eastern suburb of the countryside to hold a ceremony to welcome the spring, and then return to the court after the ceremony, and then the Son of Heaven rewarded officials of all levels. In ancient times, because people's living resources are from the mountains, forests, rivers and lakes, so the first month, the government also worship mountains, forests, rivers and lakes.

This is a national ritual. To the folk, there are also many practices to express the reverence for nature, to the ancestral shrine ancestor worship is an important element of the folk New Year. In addition, the 23rd day of the Lunar New Year to sacrifice Zao Wang Wang, New Year's Eve, set up the heaven and earth table to receive the gods, enshrine the gods of heaven and earth, are the important rituals of the Spring Festival. In short, the rituals of honoring the gods of heaven and earth and ancestors are an important part of the Spring Festival, both in the state and in the private sector. These rituals express the obedience and reverence to heaven and earth and ancestors, and also enable people to experience a sense of sacredness in the Spring Festival.

Ancient people also had many taboos in the first month of the year, which are also recorded in the Book of Rites. Our ancestors understood that the protection of nature is actually the protection of human beings themselves. For example, it was forbidden to cut down trees in the first month, not to destroy birds' nests, not to kill larvae as well as unborn or newly born animals and young birds, and so on. These taboos reflect the ancient people's sense of survival in harmony with nature. Unfortunately, most of this has been forgotten by us.

From the ancient rituals of the Spring Festival, we can feel the soul of the Spring Festival, in addition to the meaning of reunion and celebration, there is also the reverence for heaven and earth and nature, and the memory of ancestors. In today's concern about ecological civilization, reviewing the ancient people's etiquette about the Spring Festival can let us perceive the essence of traditional Chinese culture more y, and make our feelings about the Spring Festival a little richer.