What are the customs during the Spring Festival?

Spring Festival, commonly known as "Chinese New Year Festival" and "Chinese New Year", is one of the most lively traditional festivals. Since ancient times, the Spring Festival has been a grand and distinctive ancient festival in China, and there is a saying among the people that "after the off-year is a year". During the period around the Spring Festival, there were many classic traditional customs, some of which are still circulating today, decorating people's lives.

First of all, New Year greetings.

An important activity of the Spring Festival is to celebrate the Spring Festival in the homes of new friends and neighbors, which used to be called New Year greetings. New Year greeting is a traditional folk custom in China, and it is a way for people to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, and express their best wishes to each other. Generally speaking, New Year greetings begin at home. On the morning of the first day, after the younger generation gets up, they should first pay a New Year call to their elders, wishing them a long and healthy life and all the best. After the elders worship, they should distribute the "lucky money" prepared in advance to the younger generation. After paying New Year greetings to the elders at home, people go out to pay New Year greetings.

Second, paste couplets.

On the afternoon of the day before the Spring Festival, children will paste couplets on the door with paste and brushes, and then let the adults below see if they are pasted correctly. Others put blessings on doors, walls and lintels to express people's yearning for a happy life. Others will stick pictures of door gods on the door panels, praying for a safe year and adding festive atmosphere.

Sticking Spring Festival couplets on New Year's Eve is the most classic custom of the Spring Festival, which has profound cultural implications and historical origins behind it. The origin of couplets is closely related to things such as peach symbols and door gods. With the development of the times, couplets are gradually linked with literati and talented people, and become an important way for literati to communicate with each other. They opposed drinking and singing poems, and developed couplet culture to the extreme.

Third, offering sacrifices to ancestors and gods.

Sacrificing to God during the Spring Festival is a custom all over China. The customs of offering sacrifices to gods are similar all over the country, but the purpose is basically the same. They all pray for good weather, good harvests and good luck in the coming year.

Generally speaking, ancestor worship is followed by god worship, and customs vary from place to place. In some places, every day before lunch, each household appoints a representative to bring food and offerings to the ancestral temple, which will not be closed until the fifteenth day of the first month.

Fourth, eat glutinous rice balls and jiaozi.

Northerners are used to eating jiaozi during the Spring Festival, which means "making friends when you are young". Because jiaozi with white flour looks like an ingot, pots and pans on the table symbolize the meaning of "making a fortune in the New Year, and the ingot is rolling in". When some people wrap jiaozi, they also wrap some coins in it. Whoever eats it has the implication of making a fortune in the coming year.

Most southern families are used to getting together to eat the traditional customs of jiaozi on the morning of the Spring Festival. Jiaozi, the breakfast on New Year's Day, must have a more special meaning. It means: everything goes well and the whole family is happy. Eating jiaozi in the New Year is not called "jiaozi" or "Yuanbao", and eating jiaozi is not called "eating jiaozi" but "getting Yuanbao". Because in the hometown dialect, "making trouble" is often called "breaking the' sweet dumplings'".

Five, walking on stilts

Walking on stilts, as one of the "hundred operas" in ancient times, actually appeared as early as the Spring and Autumn Period and has become a unique national activity in the northern region. It looks simple, but it is particularly skillful to operate. It is also an entertainment activity during the Spring Festival with a long history.

Liezi Fu Shuo recorded: "The people who had orchids in the Song Dynasty ... were twice as long as their limbs, and the limbs belonged to their tibia and were connected with it." Walking on stilts is also called "stilts" and "walking on stilts". The performers tied wooden stilts two or three feet high to their feet and performed some body movements, which added a bit of excitement to the festive atmosphere and also implied a better life in the new year.

The "Year" of China New Year means a good year and a good harvest. For thousands of years, people have always called the harvest of the lunar calendar a bumper year, and regarded the first day of the first month as the "year". On this day, gongs and drums were loud and people were beaming. From now on, people will regard this day as the first day of the year, and it will become the biggest traditional festival of the Chinese nation and even the Chinese people in the world.