What do you know about New Year's Eve?

Pre-Qin Dynasty. According to the Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals - The Record of the Seasonal Winter, the ancients used to expel "the ghosts of the epidemic" by beating drums on the day before the New Year, which is the origin of the festival of "New Year's Eve". It is said that the earliest mention of the name "New Year's Eve" is the Western Jin Dynasty Zhou Chu authored the "Record of Customs and Locations" Spring Festival and other historical records

2. It refers to the night before the first day of January on the lunar calendar in China and other areas of the Han culture circle. It is generally a day for people to eat, drink, play and have fun. People in the north have the same custom of wrapping dumplings for New Year's Eve; while in the south, the customs are different, or making rice cakes, or wrapping dumplings, or cooking dumplings, or eating rice and so on, there are many different New Year's Eve customs in different parts of the south. Dumplings are shaped like "Yuanbao" and rice cakes sound like "Niangao", both of which are good omens of good fortune.

On New Year's Eve, the whole family eats "reunion rice" together, which has the flavor of a family reunion for the New Year. When eating the reunion dinner, the "fish" on the table can not be moved, because the fish represents "wealth" and "yearly surplus", symbolizing the coming year's "wealth and luck", it belongs to a kind of "wealth and luck". Luck", it belongs to a kind of decoration, is not allowed to touch. (In a few places with different customs, such as Guizhou, the fish on the table are not inedible, but are left over to symbolize the "yearly surplus."

The climax of the New Year's Eve is the New Year's Eve dinner, when the elders give out the "New Year's money". Then, the spring scrolls and door gods are put up, and the gates are closed. It is not until the morning of the first day of the year that the doors are opened

Traditional New Year's Eve (5 photos)

The doors are opened to receive the God of Fortune, and then the family observes the New Year's Eve until the early hours of the morning.

The lights on New Year's Eve, which stay on all night long, are commonly known as the "New Year's Eve".

New Year's Eve dinner

Pasted Spring Festival couplets

Pasted window decorations

Pasted lucky characters

Pasted New Year's Eve paintings

Lighting of firecrackers

Pasted to the graveside

Based on the fire

(The Qing Dynasty's "Records of Datong County," said, "on the first day of the New Year, every family chiseled charcoal and cut the payroll to build a base that was as tall as a small floating map. The first day of the new year, every family chiseled charcoal and logged fuel base high up, like a small floating map. In time to send, the name is wanghuo. Base Wanghuo is the traditional Spring Festival customs in Inner Mongolia and Shanxi and some other places. In folklore, the point of the fire has a red-hot, prosperous gas in the sky of the symbolism.

Twelve o'clock at midnight, when the firecrackers are sounding, the fire will be lit. When it is lit, flames come out from numerous small holes, resembling a floating map, which is both cold and spectacular. Adults and children gather in a circle, some play games, some set off firecrackers, and men, women, and children of all ages come to roast the fire in an attempt to "make the fire go up to the sky". Children can also walk down the street to watch and comment on the size of the fire, who has a big fire, and who has a big fire, and who has a big fire, and who has a big fire.

The custom of having a fire was later developed in the Shuozhou area. Not only in the New Year, even weekdays to do wedding and funeral events or major festivals have a fire, some of which are in the winter in order to warm up, such as winter or the first month of the outdoor opera, the fire, so that the audience baked fire; some of which are in the summer for good luck, such as: people in rural areas in the marriage of the fire, the bride around the fire around, similar to the south of the "jumping fire pots! "

This is a condensed part of the details can be found in Baidu Encyclopedia - New Year's Eve