Hunan Spring Festival Customs and Characteristics

Many places in Hunan have the custom of celebrating the New Year, but the exact time and the degree of solemnity are different. The small year is the opening ceremony of the "New Year", from this day onwards, the festive atmosphere continues until the Lantern Festival. Zhuzhou and most other areas of the 24th lunar calendar for the "small year", Yiyang and other places to 23rd for the "small year", but Shaoyang, Loudi and other places to the first month of the 15th for the "small year". Hengyang and Xiangbei region is more important to the small year, while Zhuzhou and other less focus on the small year.

Most parts of Hunan have the custom of sacrificing to the God of Zao on December 23rd. It is said that the god of the stove on the 23rd of this day to go to heaven to say people good and bad, so the day of the festival stove, the family should be the stove, a few cases, pots and pans cleaned up, in the stove next to the god of the couplet: "say good things to the sky, the lower world to protect the peace," and in front of the stove for the candies, the whole family should be greeted with a gift to the state to make a wish, hope that the god of the stove ate, do not say bad things about the people. People's bad words. This is called "send stove".

The New Year's Eve vigil is one of Hunan's folk customs, which is a night when the firewood in the stove stays lit all night long, and the whole family stays together until after twelve o'clock. The Miao people in western Hunan are even more distinctive. Every year, 30 evening, the family fried good incense bacon, good sour fish and other delicacies, ready for the Bao Gu Soju, happy to eat "New Year's Eve dinner". But this time the whole family can not be seated. The master is fully armed, hand manipulation of a full-face shuttle dart, alone into the corner of the gate, two eyes can not stop peeping out of the fortress, in case of wild beasts and foreigners to offend, if a friend came, the master happily ran out of the door, will be a friend to pull into the house, the high and low to eat a friendly New Year's Day meal, together with the stove to spend the evening of the New Year's Eve.