Research experience of Spring Festival custom

Festivals are the most solemn traditional festivals of the Chinese nation. It lasts about 40 days from the twelfth lunar month to the eighteenth day of the first month. Such a long festival is rare in the world. Now, it is customary to call the Spring Festival China New Year. In fact, the origins of New Year and Spring Festival are different. There are two main views on the origin of Nian: one holds that Nian is a fierce monster in ancient times, which came out at the end of winter night to harm people and animals. Later, people felt the law and habit of "Nian", waiting all night, using red color, fire and explosion. There is another saying that "Nian" means grain. The word "Nian" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions is similar to the word "He", and "Nian" is the name of mature grain. Every year, when it matures, it is named "Year". According to research, in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, there were custom activities to celebrate the harvest and offer sacrifices to ancestors. By the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the taichu calendar was implemented, and it was officially stipulated that Meng Chunyue in the summer calendar (that is, the first month of the lunar calendar today) was the beginning of the year. Since then, the Festival has been inherited as a fixed day, but it was not until the founding of New China that it was really called the Spring Festival.

The custom of celebrating the Spring Festival is similar all over the country, while the countryside is more lively and has more regional characteristics than towns. The folk activities of the whole Spring Festival are mainly to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new, which can be roughly divided into three periods.