How did people celebrate the Spring Festival during the Ming Dynasty in China?

The Qing Dynasty was the late period of China's traditional society and the last stage of the development of ancient Chinese civilization, during which many of the festive customs of today's China had developed and established a detailed system of norms. The Ming Dynasty as China's last Han dynasty, attaches great importance to traditional culture, and the Spring Festival in this period to continue to develop.

I, how the Royal Spring Festival

It is well known that the royal family of all generations of regulations and rituals and sacrifices to heaven and earth and other activities attach great importance, which is not only related to the dignity of the royal family, but also the emperor to determine the strengthening of the dynasty's orthodoxy of an important way. Ming Dynasty and successive Han Dynasty as Confucian culture as the country's orthodoxy, naturally, will pay special attention to the various festivals of the year, and as China's most important Spring Festival, naturally, will also be the Ming Dynasty royal family "special treatment". The first day of spring", "people's day (the seventh day of the first month)", "on the Yuan Festival (i.e., the first month of the fifteenth)", "Yan Jiujie", "fill the barn festival ". And one of the most important is of course the first day of the first month and the first fifteenth day of the first month of the two days of the festival, both the royal family and the folk are almost to the end of the first month before the year is officially over.

Palace Shangyuan Festival

The first day of the first month is the beginning of the year, and it is very important that everything is renewed. In this day, the royal family to hold a variety of celebrations, first of all in the first five nights will be burning incense in the palace firecrackers, and then the door latch on the ground fell three times, meaning "fall thousand gold" that the next year to be able to rolling in money. And in this day people eat a variety of food, in the court there is a kind of food gift box called "Pepsi Daji boxer", in the gift box with persimmon, lychee, round eyes, chestnuts, ripe jujube and other fruits and nuts, there is also a gift box full of donkey meat people call "chewing the ghost! "

This gift box is very small in size, because the ancient people called the donkey as a small ghost, so it is called "chewing ghost".

Eating donkey meat in the Ming Dynasty was called "chewing ghosts"

After dawn, the annual first day of the great dynasty will begin, this custom as early as the Han Dynasty has been produced, the development of the Ming Dynasty has been an increasingly large and spectacular royal ceremony. In the early dawn of the first day, the capital of the civil and military officials will be from home to the Forbidden City, the first day of the general will be divided into two parts, one part of the "Chao He Yi", and the object of congratulation is different, the civil and military officials and foreign envoys to the emperor to congratulate the new year, and the wife of the family to the dowager empress, the empress dowager and empress to carry out the congratulations; The second part is the "feast", first of all, that is, the emperor in the officials to congratulate the end of the feast in the palace, officials, members of the royal family and foreign envoys can attend, and secondly, the ladies in the harem with the Empress Dowager and other people to eat. The whole scale of the first day of the dynasty is very large, the banquet is also a variety of feasts, divided into large feasts, medium feasts or small feasts, different banquets also corresponds to different dishes.

Grand Palace Banquet

Two, the Ming folk New Year's Eve

The former spoke of the Ming court is how to spend the New Year, and now we come to talk about how the people of the civil people to celebrate the New Year, due to the Ming Dynasty is the period of the novel is more developed, so in some of the Ming novels have left a lot of folk over the Spring Festival records, and we will be able to peek into the end of the story.

New Year's Eve is a very important day of the Spring Festival, and many of the customs of the Ming Dynasty are directly inherited from Song traditions, such as setting off a large number of fireworks to expel the New Year's beasts and protect the family. In the famous Ming Dynasty novel series "Three Words and Two Beats" in the "Alarm to the World", it is recorded that: "A throw pestle and mortar, straight into the cross, gui gui dang dang, like that New Year's Eve home to burn firecrackers. It's really a chess match, and it's hard to tell the winner from the loser", the author describes the fighting scene between the two martial artists as the sound of firecrackers on New Year's Eve, while another book, "Waking up to the World", also records that a character is noised by firecrackers on New Year's Eve, and that the four masterpieces of the Water Margin are also characterized by firecrackers on New Year's Eve, and that there are many firecrackers on New Year's Eve, and that it is a well-known fact that everyone knows about New Year's Eve. It can be said that everyone knows that firecrackers should be set off on New Year's Eve.

Launch firecrackers

In addition to the custom of fireworks in the novel notes have appeared, send the New Year's money, posting customs such as the god of the door in the Ming Dynasty is also very prevalent, it is worth mentioning that the image of the god of the door of the Ming Dynasty has changed, it is said that the Ming Dynasty scholars because of the belief in the science of the winds of the veneration of the past, they no longer in the Sung Dynasty Qin Qiong, Yuchigong, as the god of the door to the earliest Shentian and Yubi two people as a The door god.

Three, the folk of the first day of the New Year

The first day of the New Year in ancient times was known as the "New Year's Day" or "the first day", this day in addition to the royal family to hold a grand ceremony, the folk also have a variety of traditional customs. New Year's Eve night people want to keep watch, take a nap and so dawn will be set off firecrackers to welcome the arrival of the New Year, after the firecrackers, people will have to eat and drink. In "Water Margin", it is written: "Relying on the strength of the brothers, the country restored three cities. And on New Year's Day, get together happy, really rare ...... teach the same day to carry sheep wine, split to send to Weizhou, Lingchuan, GaoPing three places to defend the city leaders to pay, and report the sound of success. "This paragraph clearly shows that on the first day of the day people have the habit of drinking, as for the type of wine is generally to Tu Su grass brewed Tu Su wine mainly.

Tusu wine

After the firecrackers and dinner, people have to go out to pay tribute to the New Year, in the "Waking Times" wrote: "Yu'e thought about a time, sadly not happy. The new year's day, only to get up and make up. Xue old woman went to the neighboring house to pay New Year's visit. " In addition, there are "Jinpingmei", "two quarters of the beat" and other books about the people of the first day of New Year's Eve. In some areas, people still have the habit of ancestor worship on the first day of the year, which is actually from the Qin and Han Dynasties on the old habits.