Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional stories - What are the stories about off-year? What are the folklore about off-year?

What are the stories about off-year? What are the folklore about off-year?

1, the legend 1: Why do you want to sacrifice stoves in off-year?

According to legend, Kitchen God was originally a civilian, Zhang Sheng. After marriage, he spent all his time drinking, losing everything and begging in the streets. One day, he begged at his ex-wife Guo Dingxiang's house, ashamed and burned to death under the stove. When the Jade Emperor knew about it, he thought that Zhang Sheng would change his mind, and it wouldn't be bad in the end. Because he died at the bottom of the pot, he was named the kitchen god. Every year, he went to heaven on the 23rd and 24th of the twelfth lunar month and returned to the bottom of the stove on the New Year's Eve. The people think that the kitchen god must be respected because he wants to repay the kindness to heaven. Therefore, people celebrate the "off-year" on the 23rd and 24th of the twelfth lunar month, praying for peace and wealth in the coming year.

2. Legend 2: Why do you want to eat stove candy in off-year?

Legend has it that Lv Mengzheng, the prime minister of the Northern Song Dynasty, was born in poverty and wandered around. Later, he and his mother lived in a temple in Yonghe County, northeast of Zhangde area, which is now Hongyuan Temple in Caoma Village, Anyang County. The elders in the temple are knowledgeable and skilled, and they have a unique skill in making flavor snacks-making sesame candy.

Lv Mengzheng is poor, but he is smart and studious, so he is highly valued by his elders. The elders not only teach him to read, write and write poems every day, but also often reward some sesame candy for his mother and son to taste. On the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month in 976, people were busy sending the Kitchen God to heaven. Lv Mengzheng saw that people used food to worship the kitchen god, but he had nothing to worship the kitchen god, so he put the hemp candy in the temple on the painting of the kitchen god.

When the kitchen god returned to the Heavenly Palace, when the emperor asked him, he wanted to talk but couldn't open his mouth, just nodded blindly. The Jade Emperor thought that "Kitchen God" praised Lv Mengzheng's character again and again, so he made a decree to bless him and named him Lv Mengzheng. The following year, Lv Mengzheng really ranked first among the hundred candidates in the world and won the first prize.

In return for the education and help of his elders, he expanded the temple and allocated 500 tons of yellow rice, 500 tons of wheat and 100 tons of sesame seeds, so that the elders could widely teach the skills of making sesame candy as the basis for local people to make a living. Since then, on the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month, people have followed Lv Mengzheng's example and offered sesame candy to the Kitchen God, praying for the jade emperor's blessing. In this way, from generation to generation.

3. Legend 3: Why do you eat jiaozi in off-year?

Jiaozi was called "Joule" in ancient times. There is a folklore that at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was a serious famine, many people got sick and many people had rotten ears. When Zhang Zhongjing, a famous doctor, was an official in Changsha, he found a vacant lot when he saw the epidemic of plague, and set up a medical shed and cauldron on the solstice of winter to deliver medicine to people and save many poor people.

Zhang Zhongjing's medicine is called "Quhan Joule Decoction". The method is: put mutton, pepper and some cold-dispelling herbs in a pot, stew them, pick them up, chop them up, then make them into ear-shaped things with dough, cook them in a pot and give them to patients. People call this kind of thing "Joule". People eat joules, then drink a bowl of soup, then their ears are hot, their blood is boiling, and soon their rotten ears will be cured. Zhang Zhongjing didn't give up taking medicine until New Year's Eve.

Off-year is also the beginning of Chinese New Year. In the past, from the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month to the 15th of the first month, even the whole first month was a year. In the past, farmers could not rest until they counted to nine in the dead of winter, which also reflected the adjustment function of the annual festival. It is natural to eat jiaozi during the Spring Festival, and it is a long-standing custom.