Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional customs - The custom of celebrating the Spring Festival in Hainan

The custom of celebrating the Spring Festival in Hainan

The Chinese New Year customs in Hainan are similar to those in the mainland. There are customs such as picking houses to send the poor, offering sacrifices to ancestors, lighting kerosene lamps, and not sweeping the floor on New Year's Day. On New Year's Eve, couplets are posted, incense is burned and firecrackers are set off at dawn on New Year's Day, rice cakes and jiaozi are placed in the ancestral hall, and the door is opened to welcome the new year.

Sacrificing ancestors is the first important event on New Year's Eve in Hainan, and it is also a major custom in the local New Year. There is usually a fixed auspicious time.

In Hainan, before New Year's Eve to New Year's Eve, to choose a house to send to the poor is to clean the house with a broom tied with bamboo branches and leaves, set the worn-out clothes on fire and send them to the poor, and then wait for the New Year.

There is a saying in Hainan that "the anvil can't be idle for thirty nights". In the past, no matter how poor people were, they borrowed rice on the thirtieth day of the twelfth lunar month to kill chickens and ducks and worship their ancestors. It was not until our ancestors had dinner that people began to enjoy it.

On New Year's Eve in Hainan, most people will light kerosene lamps indoors, day and night, for several days until dawn, commonly known as "lighting", which means "adding happiness".