The Spring Festival, commonly known as "New Year's Day" and "New Year's Day", is one of the most lively traditional festivals. Since ancient times, the Spring Festival has been a grand and distinctive ancient festival in China, and there is a saying in the folklore that "it's the New Year after the New Year". In the period before and after the Spring Festival, there are many classic traditional customs, some of which have been passed down to this day, decorating people's lives.
One, the New Year
An important activity in the Spring Festival is to congratulate new friends and neighbors on the New Year, which is called New Year's greeting. New Year's greeting is a traditional Chinese folk custom, is a way for people to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new, and express their good wishes to each other. New Year's greetings generally start at home, the first morning, the younger generation to get up, to first pay tribute to the elders, blessing the elders a long and healthy life, all the best. After the elders are worshipped, the "New Year's money" prepared in advance will be distributed to the younger generation. After paying tribute to the elders at home, people go out to pay tribute to the New Year.
Second, posting couplets
In the afternoon of the day before the Chinese New Year, children would step on stools, take glue and brushes, and post couplets on the doors, and then let the adults below them to see if the couplets were correct. They would then ask the adults below to see if they were correctly pasted. Some people also put lucky charms on the doors, walls and lintels of their houses to express their hopes for a happy life. Some people also put pictures of the god of the door on the door panels to pray for a safe year and to add to the festive atmosphere.
Posting couplets on New Year's Eve is the most classic custom of the Spring Festival, with deep cultural and historical roots behind it. The origin of posting couplets is closely related to things such as peach charms and door gods. With the development of the times, couplets were also gradually linked to the literati and became an important way for them to communicate with each other, so that they would drink wine and recite poems and couplets to develop the culture of couplets to the extreme.
Three, ancestor worship, worship
The Spring Festival worship, is a custom throughout the east and west, north and south of China. All over the country, the custom of sacrificing to the gods is very different, but the purpose is basically the same, are in order to pray for the next year, the wind and the rain, the five grains, great luck and so on.
Ancestor worship is generally after the sacrifice of the gods, customs vary from place to place, in some places the custom is that every day at noon before the meal, each family delegates representatives, with food, offerings to the ancestral shrine to pay homage to their ancestors, and continues until the first month of the fifteenth, the ancestral shrine will not be closed.
Four, eat dumplings, eat dumplings
Northern people used to eat dumplings on New Year's Eve, is to take the old and the new, "more years," the meaning of the cross. And because the white dumplings are shaped like Yuanbao, a pot on the table to symbolize the "New Year's great wealth, Yuanbao rolled in" meaning. When some people make dumplings, they also put a few coins into the dumplings, so that whoever eats them will be rich in the coming year.
Most of the southern home habits in the morning of the Spring Festival have a family gathering *** into the traditional custom of soup dumplings. On the first day of the New Year, breakfast dumplings must be more special significance, its meaning is: everything is as good as possible, the whole family reunion. On the first day of the Lunar New Year, the dumplings are not called "dumplings", called "Yuanbao", eat dumplings are not called "eat dumplings", called "get Yuanbao It is also called "getting Yuanbao" instead of "eating soup dumplings". Because in the hometown language, often the "trouble" called "broke the 'Tangyuan' son".
Five, on stilts
Stilts as one of the ancient "hundred plays", in fact, as early as in the Spring and Autumn has appeared, and has become a special national activities in the northern region, looks simple but the operation of the skill is particularly strong, but also during the Spring Festival, a recreational activity, has a long history. It is also a recreational activity during the Spring Festival and has a long history.
In "Liezi. Said the rune chapter" there is a record: "Song have Lanzi person ...... with two limbs long times its body, belonging to its shin, and drive and gallop." Stilt-walking is also known as "tie high feet", "step on stilts", performers in two feet tied to two or three feet high wooden stilts, with the performance of some physical action, for the festive atmosphere to add a few points of lively, but also implies that the New Year step by step high.
The word for New Year's Eve, "Nian", means a good year and a good harvest. For thousands of years, people have been the lunar calendar harvest is called "good", the first day of the first month of the year as a "year day", every day, everywhere the drums and gongs, joyful, and then people will see this day as the first of the year, the beginning of the year, the Chinese people and even the world's Chinese people one of the most spectacular It has become one of the grandest traditional festivals of the Chinese people in the world.