The Cultural Significance of Mice Marrying Women

When a mouse marries a woman, it is also called mouse marriage, mouse marries a woman, mouse marries and so on. This ancient Han folklore is very popular in China. As a folk custom of the Han nationality, it is one of the most influential topics in the traditional folk culture of the Han nationality. It is a rat sacrifice held in the first month, and its plot "version" is different. The specific dates vary from place to place, some are the seventh day of the first month, some are the 25th day of the first month, many areas are the 10th day of the first month, and some are the 14th night of the first month of the summer calendar. On the tenth day in Pingyao County, Shanxi Province, the cake was placed at the root of the wall and named "Congratulations to the mouse for marrying a daughter".

It is generally believed that the behavior and taboo of rat wedding day is essentially a rat worship activity, and various Han folk handicrafts such as rat wedding stories, ballads and paper-cutting of New Year pictures are all explanations of rat worship activities. Why do rats become objects of worship or worship? There are probably two reasons: first, totem worship. For example, some people think that the ancient Yan surname took rats as totems. The second is the myth of rat induction, such as the legend of the twelve genera of the Han nationality, which says that rats have the magical power to open heaven and earth and transform everything. The Yi myth "the man who comes out of the gourd" says that human beings originated from the gourd, and the gourd was originally sealed. It was a mouse that bit a hole in the gourd, and human beings were born. The Yao myth "The Legend of Millet" and the She myth "Why the ears of rice are like the tails of mice" claim that mice help people to obtain rice seeds. These legends all reflect the special position of mice in the worship of ancient animal gods. As for the relationship between mice marrying women and mouse worship, Zhong Fulan believes that this is the legacy of the ancient custom of showing respect or friendship to mice.

Some people think that, as a folk cultural phenomenon, rats marrying women express the people's desire to eliminate rats; The reason why we adopt the way of "sending a wedding" is because we are full of fear of mice, so we cater to the habits and preferences of mice by offering food, turning off lights and banning light, which hides the real purpose. This is a choice of pursuing advantages and avoiding disadvantages under a contradictory mentality. For example, according to Wang Shucun, there was no unified "rat killing day" in ancient times, and the breeding period of rats began after spring. In order to avoid rats, people painted a picture of "mice getting married", and the actual action was to turn off the lights at night to put out the fire, to trick children into going to bed early, and to lure rats out of their holes and kill them (China Heritage1February 1996 18). Ma Changyi believes that the concept of marriage disaster has a long history. Dialect 1: "Get married and leave." If you come from your own family, you will get married; if you come from a woman, you will get married. The so-called marrying disaster, marrying wrong, and marrying mouse include the meaning of driving disaster, right and wrong, and rats and insects out of the house. In Han folk letters, the date of rat marriage is mostly from the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month to the 25th of the first month, which is the peak season for rat breeding. Sending a mouse to get married is sending the mouse out of his home. Psychologically speaking, it can achieve the goal of putting an end to the mouse. On the other hand, it is the product of the belief in the mother god of children in the culture of 18 years old. The mouse is the first of the twelve branches. "The mouse is a cathode and is hidden, so it is matched with the mouse." The mouse is a symbol of extreme yin, and the twelfth month to the first month is the time when the old and new years alternate. Therefore, choosing this time to marry a mouse also has the symbolic significance of saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new, sending yin to welcome yang and eliminating disasters.