Why is the Spring Festival getting more and more boring now?

Today is the fifth day of the first month of Ding Younian, the countdown to the Spring Festival holiday.

Spring Festival, commonly known as Chinese New Year, is the most grand traditional festival for Chinese children in a year. Family reunion, farewell to the old year and welcome the new bear's wishes and yearning for a better life in the future. But I don't know when it started. Whenever relatives and friends get together before and after the Spring Festival, they will hear a lot of such feelings: "The Spring Festival is getting more and more boring."

Someone summed up the "boredom" of the Spring Festival: in a word, tired; Two words, consumption; Three words, big party; Four words, eat the sea and sleep in the sea ... It stands to reason that the days of ordinary people are getting more and more prosperous, and festivals should be more interesting. Why is reality boring?

growth in the living standard

In the memory of many people, especially those born before 1990s, the previous Spring Festival was not so boring, but full of joy and expectation. At that time, both the rural areas that had not crossed the food and clothing line and the city people who had just solved the food and clothing problem counted the days when the twelfth lunar month arrived.

For children, Spring Festival means setting off firecrackers, lucky money, delicious food and new clothes. For adults, the Spring Festival is about visiting relatives and friends, drinking an oil lamp and dancing dragons and lions. Today, most of these contents have not changed, but there is less hope and less excitement.

Obviously, scarcity is the most valuable thing. When people can enjoy the same life as Chinese New Year, people's enthusiasm for Chinese New Year will inevitably decrease. This life is divided into two aspects: material and spiritual. With the abundance of materials, delicious things and new clothes are no longer "precious" and can be easily taken away.

As the cultural scholar Zhu said, in the era of material poverty, the Spring Festival is indeed a "carnival ceremony of eating", and now the diet of ordinary people in daily life is not much different from that during the Spring Festival. In addition, compared with the lack of spiritual and cultural life in the past, the development of transportation and communication has shortened the physical distance between people. Socialization and reunion are just a matter of sending a WeChat and flying.

Whether this demand is met for a long time or not, television, computers, mobile phones and various social software do provide a lot of spiritual nutrition. In contrast, the content of traditional Chinese New Year is inferior. Taking this year's Spring Festival as an example, a payment platform launched an activity of grabbing red envelopes and collecting blessings, which made many people leave the Spring Festival Evening and join the army of shaking their mobile phones for blessings.

Why? Because these activities are fresh and interesting. From this point of view, the year has changed, the charm of the year is weakening, and its attraction is weakened day by day by the high-speed social trains. It can even be said that the way of celebrating the New Year has changed. After all, the internet is still very lively during the Spring Festival.

The promotion of urbanization

However, the deeper change is still in people. The annual flavor of the Chinese New Year is declining, the most important manifestation is that fewer and fewer people are carefully preparing for the Chinese New Year, the emphasis on the Chinese New Year is disappearing, and many Chinese New Year customs are becoming more and more difficult to continue.

A large number of high-frequency population movements dilute the flavor of the year. It turns out that the custom of Chinese New Year was born and grew up in farming civilization. Gao Wei, secretary-general of Beijing Folklore Society, said, work at sunrise and rest at sunset. During the Spring Festival, everyone will have a rest and have fun together. They have been preparing for the Spring Festival for a long time, and the flavor of the year will definitely be stronger.

Nowadays, many people don't live in their hometown. How much energy do they have to prepare for the Spring Festival? The data proves this. According to the Statistical Bulletin of People's Republic of China (PRC)'s National Economic and Social Development in 20 15 released by Xinhua News Agency, there were 294 million people separated from their families in 20 15, including 247 million people, accounting for 18% of the total population, which means that 1 person in every six people is a floating population. Vertically, the floating population has increased by more than 10% in the past five years.

In the next decade or two, China will still be in the stage of rapid urbanization. It is estimated that the floating population in China will still exceed 200 million in 2020, and the growth rate will continue to expand. Most migrant workers didn't go home until New Year's Eve, and then left home in a hurry to return to work on the fifth day of the fourth grade, especially in the era of the only child, when children spent the New Year in one family and then rushed to another.

In this way, more and more families are only busy for a moment, and then they become deserted in an instant. This fast-paced life shortened by one year, reduced the content and even became a superficial ceremony, losing the fun of the whole family preparing for the New Year.

Now, the twelfth lunar month in the countryside is still there, but the men and women who walk on stilts and dance yangko are gone, and the taste of the year has left home with them. The old man and children stayed at the entrance of the village, as if waiting for a snow and watching them return.

At the same time, due to the changes in residence and ecological environment, many previous Chinese New Year habits are difficult to reproduce. Among the many customs of the Spring Festival, setting off firecrackers should be the most festive one and one of children's favorite activities.

During the Spring Festival, a string of firecrackers sounded in unison, adding a lot of lively and festive atmosphere to the Spring Festival. In recent years, based on the consideration of air pollution, personal and public safety, it has become normal to prohibit and restrict the discharge of fireworks and firecrackers.

As far as housing is concerned, most people used to live in adobe houses, but now they live in brick houses, more people live in commercial houses, lanterns are nowhere to hang, and the Spring Festival couplets of Fumen God are nowhere to be posted, so the festive atmosphere is naturally deserted. Folk entertainment, such as lion dancing, walking on stilts and telling stories on the street, is basically gone now.

Walking in the street, neon lights shine all night, and ancient China rises like a fairy tale, which means that we must bid farewell to some cultures and traditions that have been deeply rooted in the bone marrow.

The lack of traditional beliefs

Some experts also believe that the taste of the year is weak because of the lack of faith. In the past, we feared the gods and believed in our ancestors, but now the concept of this belief has faded, so we have lost such a spiritual pillar. All kinds of folk activities in the Spring Festival are like stars, which are festive and have their own characteristics. The word "year" is related to agriculture. One above, 1000 below. It says "Pa" In fact, the word "I" written by Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a person.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions's "begging for the year", "receiving the year" and "offering the year" all refer to a bumper agricultural harvest. Therefore, the annual festival custom in China is related to agricultural production, and evolved according to the seasonal changes of agricultural production. And by age is also called by age by special. There is a phonetic relationship between stress and disgust, which means that disgust (stress) wins, that is, some unlucky person, thing or monster is suppressed by curses, prayers and other spells.

Therefore, an important part of the Spring Festival is to worship ancestors and ask God, including sending the kitchen god to heaven, offering sacrifices to the god of wealth, asking the ancestors to bless them, and praying for good weather, abundant crops, health and happiness. Sacrifice to the kitchen god, posting Spring Festival couplets and posting New Year pictures of the door gods are all related to sacrifice.

The old symbol of new peaches mentioned in the poet Wang Anshi's famous sentence "Thousands of households always change new peaches for old peaches" is the predecessor of Spring Festival couplets.

In ancient times, the predecessor of couplets was two wooden signs made of peach wood, which were hung at the door to ward off evil spirits. This wooden sign is a symbol. Replacing the old brand with a new brand every Spring Festival means "replacing the old symbol with a new peach".

In modern civilization, many people no longer "live by the sky" and pay less and less attention to these sacrificial activities. Even some young people can't understand "why celebrate the New Year". They don't understand the roots of the year and realize its importance. Of course, they can't feel awe and cherish from the bottom of their hearts.

On the other hand, Tanabata is not the most important traditional festival, but it carries important emotional sustenance when the younger generation is not worried about eating and drinking. Coupled with the marketing promotion of merchants, the flavor of festivals has become stronger and stronger in recent years. In a word, it is difficult for people to find a reason to practice the traditional Spring Festival folklore.

The influence of foreign festivals cannot be ignored. Western festivals such as Christmas, Valentine's Day and Thanksgiving attract people who are eager to get rid of their busy lives and have a rest. The short Spring Festival holiday, which can only be enjoyed all year round, is less attractive. It can even be said that compared with these diverse and participatory festivals abroad, the Spring Festival is rigid and outdated, which is not to the appetite of young people.

As soon as I got home, my parents urged me to get married, my seven aunts introduced me, and my neighbors asked me about my salary ... The trend of human consumption and comparison invisibly added some negative colors to the New Year, which made many people afraid to go home for the New Year with psychological burdens.

The richness and lightness of the flavor of the year are also related to people's age and memory. Faced with pressure and reality, there are always many troubles in the adult world. When I was a child, my wishes were much simpler. For a child with little money, it is enough to give him a piece of candy and a little pocket money. During the New Year in China, they don't have to do their homework, their parents stay with them, their friends play together and get lucky money. They enjoyed the process very much.

For individuals, the years after growing up are not as tasty as when they were children, which is a common experience for adults. In fact, as an adult, the simplest happiness is not easy to have.

With the rapid development of science and technology and the accelerated transformation of society, with the completion of high-rise buildings, the taste of the year seems to be getting farther and farther away from us. The folk customs of the Spring Festival fully reflect China's 5,000-year-old culture and people's hard-working wisdom, but now they are on the verge of disappearing and rarely passed down.

For urbanites, while moving towards modernization, homesickness has also become a knot. Great changes in urban and rural areas have made my hometown no longer the kind hometown I remember, and the Spring Festival is not a happy and warm day.

To some extent, this is an inevitable companion in the process of social development. On the other hand, people who go home on the eve of the Spring Festival every year still practice the most fundamental reunion culture of the Spring Festival. The longing for reunion and parting seems doomed, and "Year" is still the most important day in our hearts in the future.

How to increase the "flavor of the year" and let China children enjoy spiritual and cultural traditions has become a key proposition. While inheriting the essence of folk customs, it is more important to conform to the trend of the times. Festivals don't need to be complicated, and of course the most fundamental essence can't be discarded.