The Spring Festival, commonly known as the "Festival of the Year", is the Chinese nation's most solemn traditional festival 欢度春节
统佳节. Since the first year of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the first day of the first month of the summer (lunar calendar) for the "first of the year" (i.e., "year"), the date of the New Year's Day is thus fixed, and continues to this day. The New Year's Day was called "New Year's Day" in ancient times, and after the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, when the solar calendar was adopted to count the year, the first day of January in the Gregorian calendar was called "New Year's Day", and the first day of the first month in the lunar calendar was called "Spring Festival". The first day of the first month of the lunar calendar was called "Spring Festival". The festivals of the year are also called "traditional festivals". They have a long history, are widely spread, and are characterized by great popularity, mass popularity, and even universal popularity. New Year's Day is the day to get rid of the old and bring in the new. Although it is held on the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar, the activities of the festival do not end on the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar. From the Lunar New Year's Day on the twenty-third (or twenty-fourth), people will begin to "busy New Year": sweeping the house, washing hair and bathing, and prepare for the New Year's Day utensils and so on. All these activities, there is a **** the same theme, that is, "out with the old and in with the new". People welcome the New Year and spring with great ceremony and enthusiasm. New Year's Day is also a day of worship and prayer. Ancient people said that a cooked grain for a "year", the harvest for the "great year". In the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, there was already an annual celebration of the harvest. Later, praying to heaven became one of the main contents of the New Year's custom. Moreover, gods such as the God of the Stove, the God of the Door, the God of Wealth, the God of Happiness, the God of the Well, etc., all enjoyed the incense on earth during the New Year's festivals. People take this opportunity to thank the gods for their past care and pray for more blessings in the new year. New Year's Day is also a time for family reunions and ancestor worship. New Year's Eve, the whole family gathered together, ate the "New Year's dinner", the elders to the children to distribute "New Year's money", the family sat down "to observe the New Year". At the time of the New Year's Eve, firecrackers went off, and the activities of saying goodbye to the old year and welcoming the new year reached a climax. Each family burns incense to pay homage to heaven and earth, sacrifices to the ancestors, and then pays New Year's greetings to their elders, followed by congratulations from relatives and friends of the same clan. After the New Year's Day, they begin to visit friends and relatives and give each other gifts to celebrate the New Year. The New Year's Day is also a festival of popular entertainment and revelry. After the New Year's Day, a variety of colorful recreational activities competing: play lion, dragon dance, twisting rice-planting songs, stilt walkers, juggling plays, etc., for the New Year's Day added a rich 欢度春节
喜庆气氛. At this time, just before and after the "spring", the ancient times to hold a grand ceremony to welcome the spring, whip the bull to welcome the spring, praying for wind and rain, a good harvest. Various social fire activities to the first month of the fifteenth, again forming a climax. Therefore, a set of prayers, celebrations, entertainment as one of the feast of the New Year Festival has become the most important festival of the Chinese people. To this day, the main customs of the New Year's Day have been inherited and developed intact, except for the activities of worshiping the gods and ancestors, which have been somewhat diluted compared with the past. The Spring Festival is an important carrier of the excellent traditions of the Chinese culture, which contains the wisdom and crystallization of the Chinese culture, unites the pursuit of life and emotional attachment of the Chinese people, and passes down the concepts of family ethics and social ethics of the Chinese people. After thousands of years of accumulation, the colorful Spring Festival folklore has formed a deep and unique Spring Festival culture. In recent years, with the improvement of the material standard of living, people's demand for spiritual and cultural life is growing rapidly, and the thirst for affection, friendship, harmony and fulfillment is even stronger, and traditional festivals such as the Spring Festival are receiving more and more attention and concern from all walks of life. To vigorously carry forward the Spring Festival condensed by the excellent traditional culture, highlighting the old and welcome the new, blessing reunion peace, prosperity and development of the theme, and strive to create family harmony, stability and unity, joy and peace of the festive atmosphere, and to promote the Chinese culture is everlasting, constantly developing and expanding.
1. Dumplings on New Year's Eve .
Dumplings are a traditional food with a long history in China. But the dumplings during the Spring Festival have a reunion and peaceful symbolism.
The last day of the year in the Chinese lunar calendar is called "Lunar New Year's Eve". On the afternoon of this day, housewives begin preparing dumplings. There are dozens of varieties of dumpling fillings, including pork, mutton, seafood, eggs and vegetarian fillings. On the evening of the 30th day of the Lunar New Year, the family sits around in a circle, eating the best food and drinking the best wine to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new.
The traditional New Year's Eve dumplings must be eaten at midnight, after the clock strikes zero for the new year. People set off fireworks and eat the dumplings happily. New Year's Eve dumplings have many names.
2. The joyful dress up of social fire.
China's social fire, which is neither theater nor opera, is a kind of folk art integrating music, dance and acrobatics, such as dragon dance, lion dance, rice-planting song, stilt walking, etc. If strictly categorized, it is a kind of folk art in Anhui, Hubei and other provinces. If strictly categorized, Anhui, Hubei Nuo theater, is actually a form of social fire. These folk art forms, *** with the same characteristics are warm, hot, full of festive atmosphere.
During the Spring Festival, urban and rural social fire of different sizes. Small social fires, only a single or two or three forms of literature and art; large social fires, including a variety of forms of literature and art, or a form of listing a team, or several forms of interspersed with each other, red-hot, lively.
3. Drums and gongs are noisy to see the opera.
During the Spring Festival, China's cities and towns are filled with percussion, wind, string and plucked music, mixed with the sound of firecrackers and the warmth of smiling faces. The big and small theaters in the cities are full of customers night and day, performing hot plays. In the vast countryside of the south and north of the Yangtze River, in front of the makeshift theater, people dressed in holiday costumes, men, women and children are crowded. On the stage, the drums and gongs are loud and the sound of music is melodious; under the stage, vendors selling melon seeds, candies and other snacks and various children's toys are constantly shuttling.
The Chinese folk saying "watch the opera" has two meanings. One refers to the name of the "play" and "play" of the formal theater, as distinct from the opera singing; the second refers to the performance of the various types of theater even this play, that is, a large-scale play, and the folding of the play that is different from a single play. Various types of theater have their own large repertoire, some of the whole play to be performed for several days in a row, as the current long-form television series. Those large-scale plays, usually do not have enough time to perform, the Spring Festival will be able to comfortably perform from beginning to end. The opera performances, as opposed to the big plays, are generally small in scale, but they are also popular cultural programs in rural China.
4. Red lanterns hang high.
Red lanterns are a good-luck symbol in Chinese folklore, signifying that the days are getting red-hot and prosperous. New Year's Eve, many units and residential door, in addition to posting red couplets, but also to hang red lanterns.
The fifteenth day of the first month of the Chinese lunar calendar is the last day of the Spring Festival. The fifteenth day of the first month is called the Lantern Festival, also known as the "Festival of Lights", and people call the celebration of this night the Lantern Festival, also known as the "Lantern Festival". Lanterns on the 15th day of the first month, and New Year's Eve hanging red lanterns and different, first of all, the style is different, is no longer a single round lantern, but a variety of geometric shapes and animal and plant forms; secondly, the color is different, is no longer uniform red, but red, orange, yellow, green, green, blue, purple and colorful; and again, the content is different, the lantern is painted with a variety of historical stories, historical figures, or landscapes and flowers, animals and plants.
The most striking thing during the Spring Festival is the lantern riddles, which are riddles written on the lanterns. Lantern riddles are also one of the main events at the Lantern Festival.
On the night of the Lantern Festival in ancient China, millions of lanterns competed with each other, illuminating the streets as if it were day.