What festival is the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month? What are the customs?

The 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month is the "off-year", and traditional customs include: offering sacrifices to the stove, sweeping dust, eating candy from the stove, taking a bath, and lighting lights when frightened.

1

Offering sacrifices to stoves is an important activity for off-year holidays. The kitchen god's duty is to control the kitchen fire and manage the diet. Sacrificing stoves has a history of thousands of years in China, and the belief in kitchen god is a reflection of people's dream of "having enough to eat and wear".

Step 2 clean the dust

Sweeping the house on the 24th of the twelfth lunar month: From the 24th to the New Year's Eve, we folks call this period "Spring Festival Day", also called "Dust-sweeping Day". "Dust removal" means year-end cleaning. On this day, every household should clean the environment, clean all kinds of utensils, tear down and wash bedding curtains, clean the courtyard of Liu Lu, dust off cobwebs and dredge culverts in open channels. Everywhere is filled with jubilant atmosphere of cleaning and welcoming the Spring Festival cleanly. Sweep the dust is to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, and remove the ominous. After the New Year, there are only six or seven days left before the Spring Festival, and the preparations for the Spring Festival are even more enthusiastic.

Step 3 eat stove candy

Eating stove candy is popular in northern areas. As the saying goes, "Twenty-three, honey melon stickers". When I was young, people would buy offerings such as honeydew melon, kwantung candy, sesame candy, etc., and pray that the kitchen god would be sweeter and speak well to God.

Step 4: Take a bath

Adults and children should take a bath and have their hair cut. There is a folk saying that "if you have money, you can cut your hair to celebrate the New Year". Luliang area pays attention to washing feet on the 27th of the twelfth lunar month. Mother-in-law and your son washed their feet with boiling water tonight. Adults should also help a girl who is not sensible to scrub her feet clean, leaving no dirt. There is a folk saying that on the 27th of the twelfth lunar month, your mother-in-law washes your feet. As the saying goes, if you don't wash your feet, pus will harm water for seven months.

Step 5 startle the snake and light the light

Frightened, the farmer lit a lamp in the dark and evacuated the house and damp and dark corners with lime. The children lit firecrackers and threw them under the wall in the corner, shouting "cold stings frighten insects and ants to jump straight."