What are the origins and customs and legends of the winter solstice?

A, the origin of the winter solstice

Winter solstice, is the Zhou Dynasty appeared to the Tang Dynasty began to become a holiday, prevalent in the Tang and Song dynasties, and continues to this day. According to records, the winter solstice day, the sun's shadow is the longest, the ancients believe that the winter solstice, heaven and earth yang qi began to rise gradually strong, representing the beginning of the next cycle, is a day of great good fortune. So the Zhou Dynasty to winter November for the first month, the winter solstice for the first year of the New Year. This custom was followed until the Han Dynasty.

During the Western Han Dynasty, the winter solstice was called the "Winter Festival". According to the Book of the Later Han Dynasty, around the winter solstice, a gentleman would be in peace and quiet, and the officials would not listen to the government, and would choose an auspicious day to save their lives. It can be seen, the winter solstice in the Western Han Dynasty, the government not only to hold congratulatory ceremonies, but also a holiday, officials do not work, businessmen stop business, friends and relatives to each other with food to give each other a gift, visit each other.

Two, winter solstice customs

1, ancestor worship.

2, eating roasted pork and ginger rice.

3, eat rice cakes.

4.Eating Winter Solstice Dumplings (Winter Solstice Balls).

5. Eating dumplings and drinking mutton soup.

3. Legends of the Winter Solstice

Legend has it that the custom originated from Zhang Zhongjing, the Nanyang medical sage of the Han Dynasty. When Zhang Zhongjing returned to his hometown at the end of his official career in Changsha, it was a snowy winter with chilly winds.

He saw that many people on both sides of the White River in Nanyang had their ears frozen, so he instructed his disciples to set up a medical hut on the east side of the Nanyang Pass, and used mutton, chili peppers and cold-expelling herbs to place in a pot to cook, fished out and chopped up, and then wrapped in dough to look like an ear, and then put it into a pot to cook it and make it into a kind of medication called "Cold-expelling and Ear-correcting Soup". The people were given this medicine to eat.

After taking, the people's frozen ears are cured. Later, every winter solstice into the nine, people will imitate to do to eat, and it is called "dumplings", also known as "flat food", or called "hot noodle dumplings", people also have legend eaten the winter solstice The people also have a legend of eating the winter solstice dumplings do not freeze, so the formation of "pinch frozen ears" this custom.

This custom is especially prevalent in Henan Province, where on the winter solstice, regardless of whether the family is rich or poor, dumplings are eaten, which is rumored to be the folk saying: "November, the winter solstice, every family eats dumplings." Because the arrival of the winter solstice means a colder period, dumplings that look like ears are eaten to protect the ears from freezing off.

So, we will find that people in the north, no matter where they are, will eat a bowl of hot dumplings on the winter solstice to bless themselves with a healthy and smooth winter and usher in a new year.