The traditions of the Western holiday Christmas and the traditions of the Chinese New Year in English and translation I'm making a handbook!

The Spring Festival is the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar, also known as the lunar year, commonly known as "New Year's Day". It is one of the grandest and most lively traditional festivals in China. The Spring Festival has a long history, which originated in the Yin Shang period at the end of the year to sacrifice to the gods and ancestors.

Spring Festival is here, meaning that spring will come, the recovery of the grass and trees renewed, a new round of seeding and harvest season to start. People have just passed through the ice and snow, grass and trees withered the long winter, have long been looking forward to the day of spring, when the arrival of the Spring Festival, naturally, full of joy to sing and dance to meet this festival.

For thousands of years, people make the New Year celebrations have become very colorful, every year from the 23rd day of Lunar Lunar New Year to the 30th, the folk called this period of time, "Welcome to the Spring Day", also known as the "dust day", in the Spring Festival before sweeping the dust to engage in sanitation, is a traditional habit of the Chinese people. The Chinese people have always had the traditional habit.

Then it is the family to prepare for the New Year's goods, about ten days before the festival, people began to busy purchasing items, New Year's goods, including chickens, ducks, fish and meat, tea, wine, oil and sauce, North and South fried goods, sugar bait fruit, are to buy enough, but also to prepare some of the New Year's Eve when visiting friends and relatives when the gift, the children to add a new coat and a new hat, ready for the New Year when to wear.

Before the festival in the residence of the door to paste the red paper and yellow characters of the New Year message, that is, written in red paper Spring Festival couplets. The house posted brightly colored auspicious New Year's paintings, clever girls cut out beautiful window flowers pasted on the windows, hanging red lanterns or sticking the word "Fu" and the God of Fortune, the God of the Door, etc., the word "Fu" can also be pasted upside down, passers-by read the blessing upside down, that is, blessing to the festival, all of these activities are to add enough to the festivities of the atmosphere of festivities.

Another name for the Spring Festival is New Year's Eve. In the legends of the past, Nian was an imaginary animal that brought bad luck to people. Once the year came. Trees wither and no grass grows; once the year passes, everything grows and flowers are everywhere. How can the year pass? Need to bombard with firecrackers , so there is the custom of burning firecrackers, which is actually another way to bake a lively scene.

The Spring Festival is a happy and peaceful holiday, but also the reunion of loved ones, children away from home in the Spring Festival to go home to get together. The night before the New Year's Eve, is the old year's Lunar New Year's Eve, also known as New Year's Eve, also known as the reunion night, in this time of transition between the old and the new, the New Year's Eve is one of the most important customary activities, New Year's Eve night, the whole family stay up to keep watch together, get together to drink soundly, *** enjoy the joy of family, the northern region in the New Year's Eve to eat dumplings, dumplings, dumplings, dumplings and noodles, and the word is the together; dumplings and dumplings and cross the harmony of the together and cross the meaning, but also take more years of intercourse The dumplings have the meaning of "getting together" and "turning over the year". In the south, it is customary to eat rice cakes on New Year's Day, sweet and sticky rice cakes, symbolizing the new year's life is sweet and sweet, step by step.

To the first rooster crows, or the New Year's bells ringing, the street firecrackers, loud and clear, the family is full of joy, the beginning of a new year, men, women and children are dressed in festive attire, the first to the elders in the family New Year's wishes, the festival there are to the children's New Year's money, eat New Year's Eve dinner, the second, third, began to go to the relatives to see their friends, and each other, congratulations on blessings, say some Congratulations to the new happy, Congratulations, congratulations, congratulations, New Year's Eve and other words, ancestor worship and other activities.

The warm atmosphere of the festival is not only overflowing in every household, but also full of streets and alleys, some places on the market and lion dance, dragon lanterns, performing fireworks, touring the flower market, temple fair and other customs. During this period of lanterns all over the city, the streets are full of tourists, lively, unprecedented, straight to the first month of the 15th Lantern Festival, the Spring Festival is really the end.

The Spring Festival is the most important festival of the Han Chinese people, but the Manchu, Mongolia, Yao, Zhuang, white, mountain, Hezhe, Hani, Daur, Dong, Li and other ethnic minorities also have the custom of the Spring Festival, but the form of the festival is more of their own national characteristics, more flavorful.

The origin of the Spring Festival and legend:

Spring Festival and the concept of the year, the original meaning from the agricultural, the ancient people of the grain growth cycle known as the "year", "Shuowen. The year is the year when the grain is ripe. In the Xia and Shang dynasties produced the summer calendar, the cycle of the moon for the month, a year divided into twelve months, each month to not see the moon for the day for the first day of the first month of the first day of the month of the son of the time known as the first of the year, that is, the beginning of the year, also known as the year, the name of the year is from the Zhou Dynasty, to the Western Han Dynasty to formally fixed, and has been continued to the present day. But the first day of the first month in ancient times was known as "New Year's Day", until the victory of China's modern Xinhai Revolution, the Nanjing Provisional Government in order to comply with the farming season and facilitate the statistics, the provisions of the civil use of the summer calendar, in government agencies, factories, mines, schools and organizations to implement the Gregorian calendar to the Gregorian calendar for the first day of the first month of New Year's Day, the first day of the first month of the Lunar New Year, known as the Spring Festival.

September 27, 1949, the founding of the new China, in the first plenary session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, adopted the use of the world's common calendar, the first day of the first month of the Gregorian calendar as New Year's Day, commonly known as the solar year; the first day of the first month of the Lunar Calendar is usually in the spring before and after the start of the Lunar Calendar, the first day of the first month of the Lunar Calendar is designated as "Spring Festival "and is commonly referred to as the lunar year.

Traditionally, the Spring Festival is celebrated from the Lunar New Year's Day festival on the eighth day of the Lunar New Year or the Zaos Festival on the twenty-third day of the Lunar New Year until the fifteenth day of the first month of the Lunar New Year, which culminates in New Year's Eve and the first day of the first month of the lunar year. In the Spring Festival this traditional festival period, China's Han Chinese and most ethnic minorities have to hold a variety of celebrations, most of these activities to worship God and Buddha, ancestors, in addition to the old and new, to welcome the Jubilee to receive the blessing, and pray for a good year as the main content. Activities in the form of colorful, with a strong ethnic characteristics.

One of the legends of the Spring Festival: the year-end vigil

The year-end vigil, that is, in the last night of the old year, do not sleep, stay up to meet the arrival of the new year's custom, also known as the New Year's Eve vigil, commonly known as the "year-end". To explore the origins of this custom, there is an interesting story circulating in folklore:

In ancient times, there was a ferocious beast, scattered in the mountains and dense forests, people called them "year". It is a hideous appearance, ferocious nature, specializing in eating birds and beasts, scales and insects, a day to change a kind of taste, from knocking insects have been eaten to the big living people, so that people talk about the "year" color change. Later, people slowly mastered the "year" of the law of activities, it is every three hundred and sixty-five days scurrying to the crowd gathered in the place to taste a mouthful of food, and the time of the infestation are in the dark, wait until the rooster breaks the dawn, they will return to the mountains and forests to go.

Calculating the date of the "year" rampage, the people will be this terrible night as a pass to brake, called the "New Year's Eve", and came up with a set of New Year's Eve approach: every evening of this day, every family is done in advance of the dinner, the fire! Net stove, and then all the chicken coop cattle pen tethered to the front and back doors of the mansion are sealed, hiding in the house to eat "New Year's Eve dinner", because this dinner has the meaning of bad luck and uncertainty, so organized very sumptuous, in addition to the whole family to eat together to express the harmony and reunion, but also have to be in the meal before the sacrifice to the ancestors, praying for the blessing of the gods of the ancestors, and the gods of the ancestors, and the gods of the ancestors. Safe through the night, after dinner, no one dares to sleep, sitting together in a crowded chatting courage. Gradually formed the habit of New Year's Eve to stay up to keep the New Year's Eve.

The custom of year-end vigil rose in the North and South Dynasties, the Liang Dynasty, many literati have a year-end poetry. "One night is even a double year, and the fifth night is divided into two years." People light up candles or oil lamps and keep vigil all night, symbolizing that all evil plagues and epidemics are driven away, looking forward to an auspicious new year. This custom has been passed down to this day.

Legend of the Chinese New Year 2: Wannian created the calendar

According to legend, in ancient times, a young man named Wannian, saw that the festival was very chaotic at that time, and had the intention of trying to set the festival right. But bitterly unable to find a way to calculate the time, one day, he went up the mountain chopping wood tired, sitting under the shade of a tree to rest, the movement of the shadow of the tree inspired him, he designed a sundial measuring the shadow of the sun counting the time of day, determine the time of day, and later, the drip of the spring on the cliffs inspired him to do a five-tiered funnel pot to calculate the time. Over time, he realized that every 360 days or so, the four seasons would rotate once, and the length of the day would repeat itself.

The king of the country at that time was called Zuyi, and he was also often distressed by the unpredictability of the weather winds and clouds. Wannian knew, took the sundial and funnel pot to see the emperor, to Zuyi clear the reason for the operation of the sun and the moon. Zu Yi listened to the dragon's face, felt reasonable. So left Wannian, in front of the Temple of Heaven to build the Sun and Moon Pavilion, built the sundial and funnel kiosk. And hope to measure the law of the sun and moon, project the accurate morning and evening time, create the calendar, for the benefit of the people of the world.

Once, Zu Yi went to find out the progress of the Ten Thousand Years Test Calendar. When he ascended to the Altar of the Sun and the Moon, he saw a poem engraved on the stone wall beside the Temple of Heaven:

The sun rises and the sun sets three hundred and six times, and the cycle begins again from the beginning.

The grass and trees wither and flourish in four seasons, and there are twelve rounds in a year.

Knowing that Wannian had created the calendar, he personally climbed up to the Sun and Moon Pavilion to see Wannian. Wannian pointed to the sky and said to Zuyi: "Now it is the fullness of twelve months, the old year is over, and the new spring begins, so I pray that the king of the country will set a festival". Zu Yi said, "Spring is the first day of the year, let's call it Spring Festival". This is said to be the origin of the Spring Festival. As winter turned to spring, year after year, Wannian, after a long period of observation and careful projection, formulated an accurate solar calendar, which was full of silver whiskers when he presented it to the succeeding ruler of the country. The king of the country was y touched, in order to commemorate the achievements of Wan Nian, the solar calendar named "Wan Nian Calendar", Wan Nian as the sun and moon life star. Afterwards, people hang up a picture of the star of longevity on New Year's Day, which is said to be in honor of the highly respected Wannian.

Spring Festival Legend No. 3: Posting Spring Festival couplets and door gods

It is said that the custom of posting Spring Festival couplets began about a thousand years ago in the period of the later Shu, which is historically attested. In addition, according to the Jade Candle Canon, the Yanjing Yearly Record and other writings, the original form of the Spring Festival couplets is what people call "peach symbols".

In ancient Chinese mythology, there is a world of ghosts, and in the middle of it there is a mountain with a big peach tree covering 3,000 miles, and on the top of the tree there is a golden chicken. Whenever the golden rooster crows early in the morning, the ghosts wandering at night will be rushed back to the ghost world. The gate of the Ghost Realm was situated in the northeast of the peach tree, and by the gate stood two godmen named Shentan and Yubi. If a ghost did something harmful at night, the gods would immediately find it, catch it, tie it up with a rope made of mango reeds, and feed it to the tiger. Therefore, all the ghosts in the world were afraid of Shentian and Yubi. So the folk used peach wood to carve into their likeness and put it in front of their house to avoid evil and prevent harm. Later, people simply carve the name of God Tantui and Yubi on the mahogany board, thinking that this can also suppress the evil to go to the evil. This kind of mahogany board was later called "peach talisman".