Every year since I was a child, on the twenty-third day of the first month, we would either start a prairie street or a prairie noma, but I'm not sure which word it was.
This festival is to put the white thorn hemp on the street to light a fire. The white thorn hemp is a plant unique to our desert area, which is a shrub with spikes that grows goji berries.
After the fire is lit, neighbors get together, circle around, or jump from fire to fire, and say something to make the year go well.
The old people to bring a bowl of vinegar with salt, take some New Year's Eve specially prepared dry food, wait until the fire is burning to the full, around the fire sprinkled with vinegar, break a few small pieces of dry food like a sacrifice sprinkled on the fire, while the mouth chanting, "prairie clean, prairie lucky," "prairie do not commit a hundred diseases! The first thing you need to do is to get a good deal of money from your family, and then you can start your own business with your family.
When the fire burned to no flame, the home of the old man will take a broom, the ashes of the pile of vigorously swept away, the ashes of a flash of extinction, everyone chanted "this year's wheat harvest," "this year's corn cobs big yo" and so on, looking forward to a bumper crop of words. The old people then broke the dried grain and gave it to the children. The old people would break the dry grain for the children to eat, saying that if they ate it for a year they would not catch a cold, if they ate it for a year they would be in good health, if they ate it for a year they would not bite their teeth, and so on. If they eat it, they will never wet the bed again, and so on. Neighbors and then talk about what crops are suitable for planting this year, planting what price is good for a year, gradually dispersed.
We here call the street gan, go to turn the street to say go gan on the turn. This festival is on the street to light firewood, said prairie street is also right. People circle around or jump over the pile of firewood, hoping to burn off this year's illnesses and have a year free of disease, so it seems to be correct to say prairie gan. Anyway, it has always been said that way, and it has been passed down and become more and more solemn.
Because most of the young people go out to work, taking advantage of the holiday home is also a get-together, while talking about the world, while eating snacks and drinking beverages, while setting off firecrackers, fireworks, etc., love to sing and dance the old people with equipment, shouting a few old Qinqiang or Xiaoquer, dancing a few square dance or twisting a rice-planting song, very festive atmosphere. But also, before and after the hibernation planting melon point beans, after this festival, farmers should be on the ground to work. The first thing you need to do is to get your hands on a new one, and you'll be able to do it again.
There are a lot of "prairie" ceremonies in our lives. Newborn babies from the hospital to carry home to jump in front of the door over the fire pot and then into the door; out of the cabinet of the girl to leave her mother's home to jump over the fire pot and then go out; there is an old man is not carrying a coffin out of the burial time, a street on the neighboring homes to the door to set fire to say goodbye to ...... The prairie becomes a ritual to eliminate disasters and diseases.
We have been used to going home on this day to prairie rickets. It may be that the prairie rickets make us strong and smooth.