Customs and knowledge about the winter solstice

1. Sacrifice

Winter Solstice Festival is also called Winter Festival and Jiaodong Festival. It is one of the twenty-four solar terms and a traditional festival in China. There was a saying that "the winter solstice is as big as the New Year". The palace and the people have always attached great importance to it, and there have been sacrificial activities since the Zhou Dynasty.

2. Eating dumplings

Every year on the winter solstice of the lunar calendar, dumplings are an essential holiday meal for everyone, rich or poor. A proverb goes: "On October 1st, when the winter solstice arrives, every household eats dumplings." This custom was left to commemorate the "medical sage" Zhang Zhongjing who gave up medicine during the winter solstice.

Eating dumplings during the Winter Solstice is to remember the kindness of the "Medical Saint" Zhang Zhongjing's "Quhan Jiao Er Soup". There is still a folk saying in Nanyang that "if you don't bring dumpling bowls during the winter solstice, your ears will freeze off and no one will care".

3. Jiujiu to eliminate cold

After entering Jiujiu, some literati and scholar-bureaucrats engaged in so-called cold-relieving activities. They chose a "Nine" day to meet nine people to drink (" "wine" is a homophony of "jiu"), nine dishes and nine bowls are used on the banquet, and "flower nine pieces" are used on the table to take the meaning of "jiujiu" to relieve the cold.

Ninety-nine to relieve the cold: No action on the 19th and 29th; walk on the ice on the 39th and 49th; look at the willows along the river from the 59th to the 69th; the ice of the river opens in the 79th and the swallows in the 89th Come; nine-nine plus one-nine, the plowing cattle are everywhere.