Do you know the custom of winter solstice in Dongguan?

In Dongguan, Guangdong, people call winter solstice winter, and there is another saying that winter is the New Year's Day. Around the winter solstice, every household must be busy preparing seasonal food, and family members traveling abroad must go home for reunion in time. Then let me introduce the custom of winter solstice in Dongguan to you.

Married women will go back to their parents' homes for winter worship.

Winter worship in Dongguan means that the married daughter goes back to her mother's house with her husband's belt and some cakes, fruits, pork, chickens and ducks. On the solstice of winter, the whole family get together for dinner. It means beginning and ending, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, with auspicious meaning.

Eating as a family means reunion.

Dongguan people celebrate the winter solstice, so they must eat together as a family. Because the end of the year, the wanderers have to go home for the winter and prepare for the arrival of the New Year, that is, they have to wait for the Spring Festival. It's like having a reunion dinner on the eve of the Spring Festival. Winter solstice dinner means a good start and good luck all year round.

Men need a haircut and women need a shampoo.

There is a custom in some towns and streets in Dongguan Water Town to get a haircut before the solstice in winter. There is a local proverb in Dongguan: bear the burden of winter in short, and bear the wealth of the year. It means that if you don't trim your hair in winter, it won't grow taller, but it will get shorter. But if you wear your hair for the New Year, you will be rich.

Therefore, people in Dongguan are used to having their hair cut before winter, but they don't cut their hair in winter until after the first month. Women also say that they wash their hair before the winter solstice.