What are the customs during the Spring Festival?

1. A busy year, the 23rd or 24th day of the year, is called "off-year" among the people, and people are busy since childhood. Off-year doesn't mean a certain day. Due to local customs, the days called off-year are different. During the off-year period, the main folk activities include sweeping dust and offering sacrifices to stoves. Before the Qing Dynasty, the traditional festival of offering sacrifices to stoves in the off-year was the 24th of the twelfth lunar month. Since the middle and late Qing Dynasty, the emperor's family held a ceremony to worship heaven on the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month. In order to "save money", they also worship the kitchen god, so the folks in the northern region have followed suit, mostly on the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month. In most parts of the south, the old tradition of celebrating the Lunar New Year on the 24th of the twelfth lunar month is still maintained.

Sweep dust, which is one of the new customs of cleaning old cloth years ago. The folk proverb says, "On the 24th of the twelfth lunar month, dust and sweep the house". 23/24 ended, and officially began to prepare for the New Year. Sweeping dust means year-end cleaning, which is called "house sweeping" in the north and "house sweeping" in the south. Whenever the Spring Festival comes, every household should clean the environment, clean all kinds of electrical appliances, remove and wash bedding curtains, sweep six yards, dust cobwebs and dredge culverts in open channels. Everywhere is filled with the joyful atmosphere of cleaning and welcoming the Spring Festival cleanly.

3. Sacrifice to the Kitchen God Sacrifice to the kitchen stove on the 23rd or 24th of the twelfth lunar month, that is, clean the kitchen stove after dark, tear down the old kitchen stove and burn it, and put up new paintings on the morning of New Year's Eve. If one is free, it is necessary to buy wine, meat, sugar, sugar cane, rice fruit and so on. Burn incense, light candles and set off paper cannons. The folk activities of offering sacrifices to the kitchen god can be traced back to the pre-Qin period, but at the beginning, the day of offering sacrifices to the kitchen god was not in the early years. Zheng Xuan commented on the Book of Rites: "(Kitchen God) lives in the world, and the procurator is too young to blame." Legend has it that from the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month to New Year's Eve, these days are the days when Kitchen God returns to the palace. On New Year's Eve, the Kitchen God will be invited to descend to earth again, and the people will hang up the idol of the Kitchen God before preparing for the New Year's Eve. According to "Records of Local Customs" written by Zhou Chu, a celebrity in Jin Dynasty in China, "On the 24th night of the twelfth lunar month, the kitchen god offered sacrifices to heaven, and he was one year old the next day, so he offered sacrifices to the day first."

4. Turn the word "Fu" upside down. Every household should put the word "Fu" on the door to show that they are lucky to enter the house.

5. Post Spring Festival couplets. On the eve of the Spring Festival, every household should put up red Spring Festival couplets to express people's good wishes to welcome the New Year and look forward to a new life.

6. On New Year's Eve, it is an important custom for the whole family to have a reunion dinner together.

7. Cut the window grilles, and have a stick grilles in the Spring Festival to decorate the environment and render the atmosphere, hoping to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new.