Spring Festival "heritage" reasons?

The Spring Festival, commonly known as the "New Year's Festival", is the grandest traditional festival of the Chinese nation. Since the first year of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the first day of the first month of the summer (lunar calendar) for the "first of the year" (i.e., "year"), the date of the festival is thus fixed, and continues to this day. The New Year's Day was called "New Year's Day" in ancient times, and after the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, when the solar calendar was adopted to count the years, the first day of January in the Gregorian calendar was called "New Year's Day", and the first day of the first month in the lunar calendar was called "Spring Festival". ".

The festivals of the year, also known as "traditional festivals". They have a long history, are widely spread, and are characterized by great popularity, mass, and even universal. So why has the Spring Festival become the grandest traditional festival of the Chinese nation? New Year's Day is the day to get rid of the old and bring in the new. Although the festival is held on the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar, the activities of the festival do not stop on the first day of the first month. From the Lunar New Year's Day on the twenty-third (or twenty-fourth), people will begin to "busy New Year": sweeping the house, washing hair and bathing, preparing New Year's Day utensils and so on. All these activities, there is a **** the same theme, that is, "out with the old and in with the new". People with great ceremony and enthusiasm, to welcome the New Year, to welcome the spring!

New Year's Day is also a day of worship and prayer. The ancients said that a cooked grain for a "year", the harvest for the "great year". In the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, there has been an annual celebration of the harvest. Later, praying to heaven became one of the main contents of the New Year's custom. Moreover, gods such as the God of the Stove, the God of the Door, the God of Wealth, the God of Happiness, the God of the Well, etc., all enjoyed the incense on earth during the New Year's festivals. People take this opportunity to thank the gods for their past care and pray for more blessings in the new year. New Year's Day is also a time for family reunions and ancestor worship. New Year's Eve, the whole family gathered together, ate the "New Year's dinner", the elders to the children to distribute "New Year's money", the family sat down "to observe the New Year". At the time of the New Year's Eve, firecrackers went off, and the activities of saying goodbye to the old year and welcoming the new year reached a climax. Each family burns incense to pay homage to heaven and earth, sacrifices to the ancestors, and then pays New Year's greetings to their elders, followed by congratulations from relatives and friends of the same clan. After the New Year's Day, they begin to visit friends and relatives and give each other gifts to celebrate the New Year. The New Year's Day is also a festival of popular entertainment and revelry. After the New Year's Day, a variety of colorful recreational activities are carried out: playing lion, dragon dance, twisting rice-planting songs, stilt walkers, juggling plays, etc., for the New Year Festival has added a rich and festive atmosphere. At this time, just before and after the "spring", the ancient times to hold a grand ceremony to welcome the spring, whip the bull to welcome the spring, praying for wind and rain, a good harvest. A variety of social fire activities to the first month of the fifteenth, again forming a climax.

Therefore, a set of prayers, celebrations, entertainment as one of the feast of the New Year Festival has become the most important festival of the Chinese people. To this day, the main customs of the New Year's Day have been inherited and developed intact, except for the activities of worshiping the gods and ancestors, which have been diluted compared with those of the past.