The Origin of the Spring Festival

There are two main folk sayings about the origin of the Spring Festival:

One is that there was a fierce monster called Nian in ancient times, which went door-to-door every year1February 30th, foraging for human flesh and killing creatures. On the night of the thirtieth day of the twelfth lunar month, Nian came to a village. It happened that two cowboys were fighting for a whip. Nian suddenly heard the sound of whipping in mid-air and ran away in fear.

It fled to another village and saw a bright red dress drying in front of the door. It didn't know what it was, so it turned around and ran away. Later, he came to a village, looked into the door of a family, and saw that the lights were brightly lit and dizzy, so he had to slip away again, with his tail between his legs.

As a result, people realized the weakness of Nian's fear of noise, red and light, and tried many ways to resist it, which gradually evolved into the custom of celebrating the New Year today.

Another way of saying this is that China ancient calligraphy books put the word "Nian" in the Grain Department, indicating that the weather is good and the crops are abundant. Because cereal crops are usually harvested once a year. "Year" is extended to the name of the year. Although there was a custom of Spring Festival in ancient China, it was not called Spring Festival at that time. ?

Because the Spring Festival referred to at that time refers to the "beginning of spring" among the 24 solar terms. The Northern and Southern Dynasties generally referred to the Spring Festival as the whole spring. It is said that the Lunar New Year was officially named Spring Festival after the Revolution of 1911. Because the solar calendar was used at that time, the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar had to be renamed the Spring Festival in order to distinguish between farmers and farmers.

Folk custom of Spring Festival

During the Spring Festival, various New Year celebrations will be held all over the country. Due to different regional cultures, there are differences in the content or details of customs, which have strong regional characteristics.

During the Spring Festival, there are many kinds of celebrations, such as lion dancing, floating colors, dragon dancing, worshipping gods, temple fairs, visiting flower streets, enjoying lanterns, beating gongs and drums, flying flags, lighting fireworks, praying for blessings, dancing spring dance, walking on stilts, running dry boats, dancing yangko and so on.

During the Spring Festival, you can find it everywhere, such as posting New Year's greetings, observing New Year's Eve, having a reunion dinner and paying New Year's greetings. However, due to different local customs, the nuances have their own characteristics. The folk customs of the Spring Festival are diverse and rich in content, which is a concentrated display of the essence of China people's life and culture.

The above contents refer to Weinan Municipal People's Government-the origin of the Spring Festival.