The Spring Festival is the grandest and most distinctive traditional Chinese festival, generally referred to as New Year's Eve and the first day of the first month, also known as the lunar year, commonly known as the "New Year". But in folklore, the traditional meaning of the Spring Festival refers to the Lunar New Year's Eve or Lunar New Year's 23rd or 24th of the sacrificial stove, until the first 15 days of the first month of the first month of the New Year, which New Year's Eve and the first day of the first month of the culmination. During the Spring Festival, the Han Chinese and many ethnic minorities in China hold various activities to celebrate. These activities are mainly to worship gods and buddhas, pay homage to ancestors, get rid of the old and bring in the new, welcome joy and receive blessings, and pray for a good year. The activities are colorful, with strong ethnic characteristics.
The arrival of the Spring Festival means that spring will come, the recovery of the grass and trees renewed, a new round of sowing and harvesting season will begin. People have just passed through the ice and snow, grass and trees withered the long winter, have long been looking forward to the days of spring, when the arrival of the new spring, naturally, full of joy to meet the festival with songs and dances.
The Spring Festival is the most important festival of the Han Chinese people, but the Manchu, Mongolia, Yao, Zhuang, white, mountain, Hezhe, Hani, Daur, Dong, Li and other ethnic minorities also have the custom of the Spring Festival, but the form of the festival is more of their own national characteristics, more flavorful.
The State attaches great importance to the protection of intangible cultural heritage, May 20, 2006, "Spring Festival" folk approved by the State Council included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.
The oracle bone character for "year" is written with the character "禾" on the top and "人" on the bottom. The character for "year" in the gold script is also the same as the oracle bone script, which is also derived from the characters for 禾 and 人. In the Small Seal Script, the character for "year" is written as "上禾下千", and in the Shuowen Jiezi (说文解字-禾部), it reads "年" (year), which means "year" (year) means "ripening of grain". It is pronounced from "禾" and "千". The character for "man" in the Small Seal Script was changed to "thousand", which is why Xu Shen used it, while the character for "thousand" was originally for a decorated person, which is not a contradiction in terms. "Wo" is a general term for grains, and cannot be misinterpreted as only "wheat". The good or bad of the year, mainly by the growth and harvest of "Wo" to determine the situation, and now has been unearthed in the oracle bone inscriptions in the "Wo" character, almost all look heavy was bent over, it can be seen that it symbolizes a bumper crop of cereal production. What is the meaning of the character "人" under the character "年"? From the oracle bone inscriptions, the word "year" seems to be a person's head with a heavy grain look.
The first day of the Chinese lunar year is called the Spring Festival. It is the grandest traditional festival of the Chinese people and symbolizes unity, prosperity, and new hopes for the future. According to records, the Chinese people have been celebrating the Spring Festival for more than 4,000 years, and it was initiated by Yu Shun. On a day more than 2,000 years B.C., Shun became the son of heaven and led his men to worship heaven and earth. Since then, this day has been regarded as the first day of the year and is considered the first day of the first month. This is said to be the origin of the Lunar New Year, which was later called the Spring Festival. The Spring Festival used to be called New Year's Day. The month of January in which the Spring Festival is held is called New Year's Day.
On September 27, 1949, the first plenary session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference decided to establish the Chinese People's **** and the country at the same time, to adopt the world's common A.D. chronology. In order to distinguish between the solar calendar and the lunar calendar two "years", but also because of the 24 solar terms of the year "spring" just before and after the lunar year, so the solar calendar January 1 called "New Year's Day", the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar Officially renamed "Spring Festival".
China's lunar calendar has a long history, its origins can be traced back to the Xia Dynasty, so there is a "summer calendar". The lunar calendar is 12 months in a normal year and 13 months in a leap year, which has become common knowledge. However, do you know how the leap month of the lunar calendar is set, why the leap month set in the summer more, set in the winter less? In everyone's memory, it seems that there has never been a leap first month, and therefore there is no "leap Spring Festival", why is this? The topic starts with the movement of the Earth and the Moon. Definition of year, month, day Since ancient times, all human activities are inseparable from time. And to calculate time, it is necessary to introduce units of time. All human activities and are carried out on the stage of the Earth, and thus the alternation of day and night, the phenomenon of changing seasons is naturally used as the most basic unit of time.
The rotation of the Earth brings the first natural unit of time, which is the "day". The Earth's rotation around the axis of one week for a "day", which is the cycle of alternating day and night. The movement of the earth around the sun brings the second unit of time, the "year". One full week of Earth's revolution is a "year", which is the cycle of the seasons. Finally, the movement of the moon around the earth creates a third unit of time, the month.
All motion is relative, and the motion of celestial bodies is no exception. Whether it is the rotation of the Earth, the revolution of the Earth, or the motion of the Moon, it needs to be observed relative to some reference point. Therefore, in astronomy, due to the use of different reference points will have different "year", "month", "day". The "day" that we use in our lives is of equal length every day and is called a flat solar day. Flat solar day is no longer a natural unit of time, it is assumed that the Earth's orbit is a positive circle, the Earth's axis of rotation and the plane of the orbit is perpendicular to the Earth's rotation, the Earth relative to the sun rotates one week of the time experienced. The time period that determines the change of the seasons is called the return year, and its length is 365.2422 equal solar days. Finally, the cycle of the moon's waxing and waning is called the lunar month, and its length is 29.5306 solar days. Obviously, the length of the year and the month is not exactly an integer multiple of the day, which brings some trouble to the topic of timekeeping in daily life. How to use the three units of year, month and day to calculate time is called the calendar, which includes the number of days in a year, how to determine the number of days in different months of the year, as well as the law of intercalary and so on. Solar and Lunar Calendar The length of the year and month in the calendar is an integer multiple of the length of the day, and they are no longer natural units of time, known as the calendar year and calendar month, respectively. The solar calendar, also known as the solar calendar, is a calendar based on the Earth's rotation around the sun. Each calendar year in the solar calendar is close to a return year. Over a long period of time, the uniform length of the calendar year should be equal to the regression year as far as possible. Under this condition, the year is divided into 12 calendar months, which have no astronomical significance. Therefore, in the solar calendar, the length of the year is calculated using the number of whole days that most closely resembles the regression year, which is 365 days a year.
Obviously, if the length of the calendar year in the solar calendar is 365 days each year, then since each calendar year is 0.2422 days shorter than the length of the return year, the seasons will be postponed backwards without interruption as the difference accumulates without interruption. For example, after 720 years, the accumulated difference reaches about half a year, when the vernal equinox occurs in October and July becomes the coldest month of the year. This would inevitably result in the reversal of cold and heat, and confusion of the years. In order to overcome this, the solar calendar designates a leap year as a year of 366 days, while a year with 365 days is called a leap year. The rule of leap year can be expressed in three words: a non-century year is a leap year if the number of AD years is divisible by 4, a century year (e.g., 1900, 2000) is a leap year if the number of AD years is divisible by 400, and the rest of the years are equal years. Thus, in 400 years, there are 97 leap years and 303 equal years, with an even length of 365.2425 days, which is only 26 seconds difference from the length of the return year, and only 1 day difference after more than 3,000 years, which is very accurate. The current solar calendar was promulgated by Pope Gregory VIII in 1582 AD, and has been adopted by countries all over the world since the second year, and is therefore also known as Gregorian calendar or Gerry calendar.
The lunisolar calendar, also known as the lunar calendar, is a calendar based on the cycles of the moon. The principle of the lunar calendar is to make each calendar month close to the lunar month, the uniform length of the calendar month should be the lunar month. Then, the length of the calendar year is made as close as possible to the return year. Since the length of the lunar month is 29.5306 days, the calendar month of the lunar calendar is 30 days for the big month and 29 days for the small month, alternating so that the even length of the calendar month is close to the lunar month. Of course, this is still not a small difference, so in the current Islamic calendar adopted by the Muslims, the delimitation of the 360 calendar months (i.e., 30 calendar years) in the big month accounted for 191, the small month for 169, so that in the calendar month and the lunar month of the coordination of a great improvement.
The purely lunar calendar year is also divided into an ordinary year and a leap year. A leap year is 355 days long and consists of six major and six minor months. A leap year of 355 days, with an additional day at the end of December, consists of seven major and five minor months. This calendar does not take care to match the even length of the calendar year with the length of the return year, and over time, the two differed greatly. For example, for a 68-year-old Hui man who uses the lunar calendar to keep track of the year, he honestly only had 66 springs.
Since the fundamental feature of the lunar calendar is the even length of the calendar month, that is, the lunar month, each date necessarily corresponds to a certain phase of the moon, for example, the fifteenth lunar month is roughly the full moon. The months of the solar calendar do not reflect this natural phenomenon. But the calendar year of the lunar calendar can not reflect the seasonal changes, and agricultural production and people's daily life out of touch, and therefore has been rarely used by people.
Lunar and solar calendars and festivals:
The lunisolar calendar is based entirely on the movement of the moon, while the solar calendar is based entirely on the Earth's revolution around the sun. The lunar calendar, which has been used for a long time in China, is not entirely based on the lunar calendar or the solar calendar, but on both. On the one hand, the lunar calendar takes the moon's orbit around the earth as one month, and the length of the even calendar month is the lunar month; this is the same as the principle of the Taiyin calendar, so it is also called the lunar calendar. On the other hand, the Lunar Calendar has intercalary months to make the even length of the calendar year as close as possible to the year of return, and 24 solar terms to reflect the changing characteristics of the seasons. The lunar calendar combines the characteristics of both the lunar and solar calendars, and is therefore called the "yin-yang calendar".
The length of the lunar month in the yin-yang calendar is the same as that of the solar calendar, and there is a difference between the big and small months: the big month falls on the 30th, and the small month falls on the 29th, which is what is known as the lunar calendar. But the arrangement of the lunar calendar is different from the calendar back, back to the calendar in the size of the month mechanically arranged, while the lunar calendar, the size of the month to be projected after the decision, more sophisticated than the calendar back. In the lunar calendar, the beginning of the month is designated as the first day of the month, and the day of the first day of the month is designated as the first day of the month. The size of the lunar month depends on the date of the conjunction, i.e., it is determined by the number of days included in the two lunar solstices. As the length of the two lunar months is not exactly 59 days, the number of big and small months in a year is not necessarily equal, and sometimes there may be two consecutive big or small months in order to make the even length of the calendar month as close as possible to the lunar month, and the remaining difference depends on the intercalary month as well as the intercalary month of the month to regulate the arrangement of the construction.
The solstice month and the year of return are two cycles that are difficult to coincide with, and their residuals are very fragmentary, while our lunar calendar has been very successful in reconciling these two natural cycles as the basis of the yin and yang calendars. As early as the Spring and Autumn Period, it was discovered that if seven leap months were inserted into the 19 lunar years, the total length would be almost equal to that of the 19 solar years. This "seven leap months in 19 years" is called "leap chapter" in the ancient calendar. To be honest, 19 leap years = 6939.60 days, while 235 (12 x 19 + 7) lunar months = 6939.69 days, a difference of only 2 hours, 9 minutes and 36 seconds. In order to further explain the rule of leap months in the lunar calendar, we first need to come to the festival for some explanation.
The 24 solar terms are a major feature of our lunar calendar. Since the lunar calendar has long been called the lunar calendar, many people mistakenly believe that the festival belongs to the lunar calendar, to be honest, the festival depends entirely on the rotation of the Earth, can be called a part of the solar calendar. Setsubuns reflect the different positions the Earth reaches as it travels in its orbit. Due to the relative nature of motion, they are also the different positions reached by the Sun as it moves through the ecliptic. The delineation of the sun's ecliptic, i.e., the zero hour, is called the vernal equinox, and thereafter the ecliptic is set at 15° intervals, and *** there are 24 solar terms. Starting from the vernal equinox, in order for the Qingming, the rain, the summer, the small full, the Mangzao, the summer solstice, the small summer, the summer heat, the autumn, the summer heat, the white dew, the autumnal equinox, the cold dew, the frost, the winter, the snow, the snow, the winter solstice, the small cold, the cold, the spring, the rain, the jellyfish. Because of this, the dates of the festivals are relatively fixed in the solar calendar. For example, the vernal equinox always falls on March 21st or 22nd. A few variations are caused by the unequal lengths of calendar months in the solar calendar and the addition of a day in leap years. On the contrary, the dates of the solar terms in the lunar calendar are variable, and the dates of the same solar term in different years of the lunar calendar can differ by as much as one month. It is now clear that the solar solar terms belong to the solar calendar and not to the lunar calendar. Leap Rule in the Lunar Calendar The 24 solar terms can be divided into two categories, namely, "Nodal" and "Medium", which are abbreviated as "Nodal" and "Qi". The 24 solar terms can be divided into two categories: "Nodal" and "Mid-qi". Ancient Hou people from the winter solstice from the mid-qi, festival qi arranged between, so the small cold for the festival, the big cold for the mid-qi, and so on. A year **** 12 in the qi and 12 festival qi, the general situation of each month each has a qi and a festival qi. Each Zhongqi is assigned to belong to a certain month and cannot be confused.
There are two ways to define the nodes. Ancient Hou calendar used called "constant gas", that is, according to the time of the year is divided into 24 parts, each festival evenly 15 days more, so also known as "flat gas". The modern lunar calendar adopts the so-called "fixed qi", that is, according to the position of the Earth in orbit as a standard, 360 ° a week, 15 ° between the two periods. Since the Earth is located around perihelion at the time of the winter solstice, the speed of movement is faster, so the sun moves 15° on the ecliptic in less than 15 days. The opposite is true around the summer solstice, when the sun moves slower on the ecliptic, as much as 16 days for a single solar term. The use of fixed qi can ensure that the spring and fall equinoxes will inevitably be in the two days of the day and night equinoxes.
The method of intercalary in the lunar calendar is closely related to the division of the middle air and the use of fixed air. As the length of the two festival is uniformly about 30.5 days, and the lunar calendar month is uniformly about only 29.5 days, so the date of the festival in the month will certainly be delayed by 1 to 2 days compared with the previous month. If this continues, there will always be a month with only a festival but not a mid-air. This month is designated as a "leap month", as the month in the lunar calendar year excess of the 13th month. Since the festival season occurs strictly in accordance with the length of the return year, setting up a leap month according to the above definition will ensure that the even length of the lunar calendar year is very close to the return year. This is how the 19th year of the seven leap method is to set the intercalary.
Due to the use of fixed gas method, the uniform length of the winter section of a gas is about 29.74 days, not much longer than the solstice month, the festival month by month backward postponed very slowly, so the possibility of setting up a leap month in winter is very small. On the contrary, around the summer solstice, the earth moves slowly, the delivery of the festival is also slow, a gas can be up to 16 days, and therefore the summer and a few months before and after, such as the lunar calendar, three, four, five, six, seven months, intercalary month set more. In the 200 years from 1821 to 2020 AD **** there are 74 leap months in the lunar calendar. Among them, leap first month, leap November, leap December not once, while leap May is the most, up to 16 times. No wonder we can not touch the leap first month, can not live "leap Spring Festival".