China folk culture

The historical origin of the annual custom culture is very long, which seems to be a long historical picture in front of us. Actually, it is not. As far as folk culture is concerned, it is not only inherited in an orderly way, but also tempered by disasters in the hunting age and farming age. The ancestors sorted out a philosophical and crucial concept of inheritance, that is, the folk culture of the New Year forged by "eliminating disasters" and "welcoming the new". Disaster relief is to express the experience process within one year, including the updated results; Welcoming the new year belongs to the field of spirit and soul, and it is a creative spirit to celebrate the new achievements made in the past year.

The custom of New Year's Eve in Han Dynasty is to eliminate disasters and welcome the new. "Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals" records: "Soup began in Yi Yin, was buried in a temple and smoked with reeds." In the early Shang Dynasty, the custom of worshipping reed to eliminate disasters has evolved into the custom of smoking reed. Tang Wang Jianli Shang Dynasty, when Yi Yin was the prime minister, used the colorful blessing of burning reeds as a celebration ceremony in the ancestral hall, with the purpose of wishing the Shang Dynasty prosperity and welcome the new. Reed turned into dust and no longer exists, leaving the connotation of custom: to eliminate disasters and welcome the new, to eliminate disasters and welcome the new. The difference is that if it is a form of disaster relief, welcoming the new is an idea; If it is in the form of welcoming the new year (such as Spring Festival couplets), it is based on the idea of realistic disaster, which is the significance of the concept of cultural inheritance in 2008. People in the Han Dynasty paid attention to the basic position of disaster relief, so it was divided into two days. Sitting at night on New Year's Eve is a review and summary of the achievements and failures of the past year, a new development of the concept of inheritance in the Han Dynasty, and a clear conceptual foundation for the festival culture of later generations. Save for a rainy day, the sense of hardship is rational thinking, and it is a precious spiritual wealth handed down by ancestors on New Year's Eve.

The second "innovation" of New Year's custom culture is the custom of Spring Festival couplets, which evolved after the prosperous Tang Dynasty. This "innovation" not only exposed the scandal of tampering with the ancient customs of the royal family, but also abolished the vulgar customs and old ideas of the royal family and opened up a new road that will never die-the birth of Spring Festival couplets, which is of milestone significance in the history of Chinese New Year customs and cultural development.

We can see that the early custom of Spring Festival couplets is the so-called "Fu Tao" door god, which originated in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, that is, painting Er Shen on two mahogany boards to exorcise ghosts. This form is actually the resurgence of the royal custom in Han Dynasty. One is to deny the popular "three worships" in the folk New Year's Eve custom in Han Dynasty, that is, to draw a tiger on the door to eliminate disasters and transform it into the form of a door god; The second is to use two red boards as the customization of the emperor's evocation; Thirdly, it is very important that Liu Xin's (revised) tampering with the Three Seas Classic, Er Shen exorcism, was released for the first time in the society, which set a precedent for the later royal obscurantism.

In some parts of Henan, there are still two ancient customs: the first is the witchcraft of the folk witch god, which uses a DOG board with the word "Fu Tao" written on it and then wraps it with red cloth. They use it to walk around the street to exorcise ghosts and treat diseases. Obviously, this is a bad consequence of imperial customs in society.

The second is the custom of "three worships" on New Year's Eve in some parts of Henan Province, which is a precious material preserved from the original flavor of the Han Dynasty.

Of course, folk culture is not opposed to drawing a clear line with the emperor, and there are many rulers and advanced figures who conform to public opinion in history. Shang Tang's indifference to "form" innovation shows that he pays attention to the inheritance concept of eliminating disasters and welcoming the new. Meng Chang, West Shu, is known as the first couplet "Qing Yu is in the new year, Changchun is in Jiaxu Festival", just like the theme of the New Year pictures. Wang Anshi, a reformer in the Northern Song Dynasty, praised the folk couplets for "bringing forth the old and bringing forth the new" and put forward that "new peaches are often exchanged for old peaches". Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, advocated posting Spring Festival couplets and abandoned the door-sticking god, which promoted the reform of "carrier innovation" and replaced red boards with red paper for the first time. In the Ming Dynasty, Li Shizhen wrote a book as a doctor, exposing the lies fabricated by the royal family and confusing people. Zhuxian Town in the Northern Song Dynasty resisted the royal custom of welcoming the new year and created a new position for New Year pictures. This innovative spirit of following the Spring Festival couplets is the real honor of Zhuxian Town people.