Yangzhou Spring Festival custom is from New Year's Day to the fifteenth day of the first month (preferably rural custom).

Speaking of Yangzhou's Spring Festival customs, many folk experts will mention the folk customs such as New Year greetings, eating glutinous rice balls and setting off firecrackers. However, some customs once prevailed in Yangzhou, but now they are drifting away with the improvement of people's living conditions and the change of living environment. Many simple customs are always fixed in the memory of old Yangzhou.

Keywords: climbing the door head

On New Year's Eve, after dinner, the old Yangzhou lit incense burners and candles to observe the New Year. Adults and children put on new clothes, and the elders began to give lucky money to the younger generation. At this time, adults will close the door and let the children at home grab the latch behind the door and climb up. Because the old-fashioned door is made of wood, there are several cross bars from top to bottom behind the door with a latch switch in the middle. This custom is to climb the door. Old people say that little people can grow up by climbing the door at night, climb fast and grow fast, and climb high and grow high. Children from families with many children also compete with each other, which not only exercises the body, but also increases the festive atmosphere of the festival.

Keywords: overall situation

On New Year's Eve, the elders put cloud cakes, apples and oranges on everyone's bedside as gifts for getting up on the first morning of the new year. Eating cloud cakes means "Gao Shuang" and eating apples means "safe and sound". These customs are found in many parts of the country, but eating oranges has a unique significance in Yangzhou. Because in Yangzhou dialect, luck is called "local gas", luck is called "walking", and the word "orange" is homophonic with the word "local gas", so giving oranges to others means bringing good luck to others. Yangzhou people invite people to eat oranges in the New Year, which means wishing each other good luck and all the best. Mr. Zhu Ziqing, a famous modern prose master who calls himself "I am from Yangzhou", wrote in his well-known masterpiece "The Back" that Zhu Ziqing's father, Xiao Pogong, personally went to Pukou Station to send his son to Beijing after his old mother's funeral, dragging his fat body up and down to buy oranges for his son. The father who knows Yangzhou folk custom buys oranges for his son, which is full of his good wishes to his son. He hopes that his son will have a smooth sailing. The little orange actually bears the affection of a father who has suffered a lot for his son.

Keywords: sugar

On the morning of New Year's Day, there is a folk custom in Yangzhou. Adults and children have to go out to their neighbors' houses to pay New Year greetings to their elders. At this time, the busiest is the children. They go door to door in droves to ask for sugar, that is, they go door to door to pay New Year greetings to their elders. The elders looked at the children with a childish face and listened to the children shouting "aunt", "big", "father" and "grandmother". Amid the blessings of "Congratulations on getting rich" and "Congratulations on good health and vigorous spirits", they held out fruit boxes prepared in advance and distributed all kinds of candy, cloud cakes, oranges and apples to the children who came to pay New Year greetings, and wished them "admitted to the university" and "all their wishes come true". The custom of begging for sugar inherits the fine tradition of respecting the old and loving the young of the Chinese nation.

Keywords: Chen Genian

Eating jiaozi and noodles on the morning of New Year's Day means reunion, and noodles mean long-term. Instead of cooking new rice at noon on New Year's Day, we take out the leftovers from New Year's Eve and heat them before eating. This is called "New Year's Eve". According to the old people, we can't cook new meals from the first five days of the lunar new year to the fifth day of the lunar new year, which means we can't finish eating them every year.

Keywords: sweeping the floor to gather wealth

On New Year's Day, people don't do anything to sweep the floor, but only on the second day of the first month. On this day, they also pay attention to sweeping the floor: the broom should be swept into the house from the gate, instead of sweeping the dust and garbage outside the door as usual. Sweeping the floor the next day is to sweep the wealth gathered at home on New Year's Day, then pile it in one place and then sweep it out.

Keywords: God of Wealth carries water

On the fifth day of the first month, folklore is the birthday of the god of wealth. It doesn't shine every day. There is a folk custom in Yangzhou: the male owner of a family should get up early to fetch water from a nearby river or well. This kind of water is called "the water of God of Wealth". It is said that whoever wins the first place will make a fortune in the new year. The author once asked the mother who was familiar with this custom: "Who can prove which one went the earliest? No one witnessed the river in the middle of the night! " Mother said, "Buddha knows."

Key words: seven awls, eight clamps, nine awls and ten excavators.

People in Yangzhou believe that the seventh day of the first month is the birthday of the Bodhisattva Mars. On this day, people don't move the needle for fear of poking the bodhisattva in the eye. You can't move scissors on the eighth day of the first month, awls on the ninth day and shovels on the tenth day, otherwise you will be pinched, bitten and stung by snakes and insects when transplanting rice in the field. Yangzhou folks also have a saying that "the 10th day is beginning of life", that is, everyone has a birthday on the 10th day.

Keywords: beautiful day

The first month coincides with a sunny day, which is convenient for relatives and friends to walk around each other. There is a saying in old Yangzhou that "seven people and eight valleys store beans and ten sesame seeds", which means that sunny days are beneficial to people, the country and the cultivation of beans and sesame seeds. In a word, sunny days can bring good weather for a year, which bodes well for the country and the people.

Keywords: off-year

On the fifteenth day of the first month, Yangzhou people call it off-year, which means that the New Year in old Yangzhou didn't really end until the fifteenth day of the first month. The so-called "off-year" is not a "year" originally, but a day with other special meanings. The date of off-year is different in different places: in some places in old Shanghai, it is the 29th of the twelfth lunar month, in some places in the northwest, it is the 8th of the twelfth lunar month, and in most parts of the country, it is the 23rd or 24th of the twelfth lunar month. Of course, there are many places where there is no such thing as "off-year". Some experts once said in the media that the custom of Yangzhou is actually called the 24th day of the twelfth lunar month, and people in Yangzhou celebrate the New Year. It can be seen that experts do not understand and are not familiar with the real customs of Yangzhou. In fact, on the 24th day of the twelfth lunar month, Yangzhou people have the custom of sending stoves, and on this day they began to dust and prepare for the arrival of the New Year. This day is the day to sacrifice the stove for dust removal. According to Lu Chunqiu, as early as the Yao and Shun era, China had the custom of sweeping dust during the Spring Festival. According to the folk saying, because of the homonym of "dust" and "Chen", sweeping dust in the Spring Festival means getting rid of the old and getting rid of the new, and its original intention is to sweep away all "bad luck". This custom has placed people's desire to break the old and create new ones and their prayers to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new. The so-called off-year in Yangzhou is the fifteenth day of the first month.