Congratulations, Yuanri
Wang Anshi (Song Dynasty)
The sound of firecrackers marks the end of the year, and the spring breeze brings warmth to Tusu
Qian Every household always exchanges new peaches for old charms
It refers to the Spring Festival
The Spring Festival is an ancient festival in our country and the most important festival in the whole year. How about To celebrate this festival, over thousands of years of historical development, some relatively fixed customs and habits have been formed, and many of them are still passed down to this day.
Sweeping dust
"On the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth lunar month, dust and sweep the house." According to "Lu Spring and Autumn Annals", my country had the custom of sweeping dust during the Spring Festival in the era of Yao and Shun. According to folklore: because "dust" and "chen" are homophonic, sweeping dust in the New Year means "removing the old and spreading the new", and its purpose is to sweep away all bad luck and bad luck. This custom entrusts people with their desire to destroy the old and establish the new and their prayers to say goodbye to the old and usher in the new. Every Spring Festival comes, every household has to clean the environment, wash all kinds of utensils, remove and wash bedding and curtains, sweep the Liulv courtyard, dust away dirt and cobwebs, and dredge open ditches and ditches. Everywhere is filled with the joyful atmosphere of doing hygiene and welcoming the New Year cleanly.
Spring couplets
Spring couplets are also called door pairs, spring posts, couplets, couplets, peach charms, etc. They describe the background of the times and express good wishes with neat, dual, concise and exquisite words. , is a unique literary form in my country. Every Spring Festival, every household, whether in urban or rural areas, selects a red Spring Festival couplet and pastes it on the door to add a festive atmosphere to the festival. This custom originated in the Song Dynasty and became popular in the Ming Dynasty. By the Qing Dynasty, the ideological and artistic quality of Spring Festival couplets had been greatly improved. Liang Zhangju’s Spring Festival Couplets monograph "Three Couples on the Threshold" has a detailed introduction to the origin of the couplets and the characteristics of various works. All discussed.
There are many types of Spring Festival couplets. According to the place of use, they can be divided into door centers, frame pairs, horizontal drapes, spring strips, bucket squares, etc. The "door center" is affixed to the upper center of the door panel; the "frame pair" is affixed to the left and right door frames; the "horizontal stripe" is affixed to the crossbar of the door; the "spring strips" are affixed to the corresponding places according to different contents; "Dojin" is also called "door leaf", which is square and diamond-shaped, and is often posted on furniture and screen walls.
Pasting window grilles and pasting the word "福" upside down
In the folk, people also like to put various paper-cuts - window grilles - on their windows. Window grilles not only enhance the festive atmosphere, but also integrate decoration, appreciation and practicality. Paper-cutting is a very popular folk art in my country and has been loved by people for thousands of years. Because it is mostly pasted on windows, it is also called "window flower". With its unique summary and exaggeration techniques, window grilles vividly express auspicious symbols and good wishes, decorating the festival with prosperity and splendor.
At the same time as pasting Spring Festival couplets, some families have to paste large and small "福" characters on their doors, walls, and lintels. Posting the word "福" during the Spring Festival is a long-standing folk custom in my country. The word "福" refers to blessing and luck, expressing people's yearning for a happy life and their wishes for a better future. In order to more fully reflect this yearning and wish, some people simply paste the word "福" upside down to express "happiness has arrived" and "blessing has arrived". Folks also use the word "Fu" to make various patterns in detail, such as longevity stars, longevity peaches, carps jumping over dragon gates, good harvests, dragons and phoenixes, etc.
New Year Pictures
Posting New Year pictures during the Spring Festival is also very common in urban and rural areas. The thick black and colorful New Year pictures add a lot of prosperity and joy to thousands of households. New Year pictures are an ancient folk art in my country, reflecting the people's simple customs and beliefs, and reposing their hopes for the future. New Year pictures, like Spring Festival couplets, originated from the "door god". With the rise of woodblock printing, the content of New Year paintings is no longer limited to monotonous themes such as door gods, but has become rich and colorful. In some New Year painting workshops, "Three Stars of Fortune, Luxury and Longevity", "Blessings from Heavenly Officials", "Five Grain" Classic color New Year pictures such as "Prosperous Harvest", "Prosperity of Six Livestocks", "Welcoming Spring and Receiving Good Luck" can satisfy people's good wishes of celebrating the good year. There are three important producing areas of New Year paintings in our country: Taohuawu in Suzhou, Yangliuqing in Tianjin and Weifang in Shandong. They have formed three major schools of Chinese New Year paintings, each with its own characteristics.
The earliest New Year paintings collected in our country today are the woodcut New Year paintings of the Southern Song Dynasty, "Slender and Slender with the Beauty of the Country", which depict four ancient beauties: Wang Zhaojun, Zhao Feiyan, Ban Ji and Luzhu.
The most widely circulated among the people is a New Year painting of "Mouse Marriage". It depicts an interesting scene of a mouse marrying a bride according to human customs. In the early years of the Republic of China, Shanghai Zheng Mantuo combined the calendar with New Year pictures. This is a new form of New Year pictures. This two-in-one New Year picture later developed into a wall calendar, which is now popular all over the country.
Keeping the year old
Keeping the year old on New Year’s Eve is one of the most important annual customs. The custom of keeping the year old has been around for a long time. The earliest record can be found in the "Fengtu Zhi" of Zhouchu in the Western Jin Dynasty: On New Year's Eve, each person greets each other with gifts, which is called "giving the new year"; "Dividing the year old"; everyone stays up all night waiting for dawn, which is called "keeping the year old".
“One night is two years old, five o’clock is divided into two days.” On New Year’s Eve, the whole family gets together, has New Year’s Eve dinner, lights candles or oil lamps, sits around the fire and chats, waiting to bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new year. At this time, the all-night vigil symbolizes driving away all evil plagues and looking forward to auspiciousness in the new year. This custom gradually became popular. In the early Tang Dynasty, Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, wrote a poem about "keeping the year old": "The cold leaves the winter snow, and the warmth brings the spring breeze." To this day, people are still used to staying up late on New Year's Eve to welcome the new year.
In ancient times, staying up late had two meanings: older people staying up late meant "saying goodbye to the old year", which meant cherishing time; young people staying up late meant to prolong the life of their parents. Since the Han Dynasty, the transition time between the new and the old year has generally been at midnight.
Firecrackers
There is a saying among Chinese people that "firecrackers open the door". That is to say, when the New Year arrives, the first thing every household does when they open the door is to set off firecrackers to ward off the old and welcome the new with the beeping sound of firecrackers. Firecrackers are a specialty of China, also known as "firecrackers", "firecrackers" and "firecrackers". It originated very early and has a history of more than 2,000 years. Setting off firecrackers can create a festive and lively atmosphere. It is a festive entertainment activity that can bring people joy and good luck. With the passage of time, the application of firecrackers has become more and more widespread, and the varieties and colors have become more and more numerous. During major festivals and happy events, as well as weddings, house construction, openings, etc., firecrackers must be set off to celebrate and for good luck. Now, Liuyang in Hunan, Foshan and Dongyao in Guangdong, Yichun and Pingxiang in Jiangxi, and Wenzhou in Zhejiang are famous hometowns of fireworks in my country. The firecrackers they produce are of various colors and high quality, and are not only sold well across the country, but also exported to the world.
New Year greetings
On the first day of the New Year, people get up early, put on their most beautiful clothes, dress up neatly, and go out to visit relatives and friends, pay New Year greetings to each other, and wish each other New Year’s greetings. Good luck in the coming year. There are many ways to pay New Year's greetings. Some are led by the head of the same clan and several people go from house to house to pay New Year's greetings. Some are colleagues inviting a few people to pay New Year's greetings. There are also people who gather together to congratulate each other, which is called "group worship". Since it was time-consuming and laborious to pay New Year greetings at home, some upper-class figures and scholar-bureaucrats later used various stickers to congratulate each other, and the later "New Year's greeting cards" developed from this.
When paying New Year greetings during the Spring Festival, the younger generation should first pay New Year greetings to the elders, wishing the elders longevity and health. The elders can distribute the New Year's money prepared in advance to the younger generation. It is said that the New Year's money can suppress evil spirits, because "year" and "evil" "Homophonous" means that if the younger generation gets the lucky money, they can spend their first year in peace. There are two types of New Year's money. One is made of colorful ropes threaded into a dragon shape and placed at the foot of the bed. This record is found in "Yanjing Years' Notes"; the other is the most common, which is given by parents wrapped in red paper. Children's money. New Year's money can be given to the younger generation in public after paying New Year's greetings, or parents can secretly put it under the child's pillow when the child is asleep on New Year's Eve. Nowadays, the custom of elders distributing lucky money to younger generations is still popular.
Spring Festival Food Customs
In ancient agricultural societies, from about the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, housewives would be busy preparing food for the New Year. Because pickling cured meat takes a long time, it must be prepared as early as possible. Many provinces in my country have the custom of pickling cured meat, among which Guangdong Province’s cured meat is the most famous.
Steamed rice cake. Rice cake has become a must-have seasonal food for almost every household because of its homophonic pronunciation of "year high" and its varied tastes. The styles of rice cakes include square yellow and white rice cakes, which symbolize gold and silver and convey the meaning of getting rich in the new year.
The taste of rice cakes varies from place to place. Beijingers like to eat red date rice cakes, mince rice cakes and white rice cakes made from glutinous rice or yellow rice. People in Hebei like to add jujube, red beans, mung beans, etc. to rice cakes and steam them together. In northern Shanxi and Inner Mongolia and other places, it is customary to eat fried rice cakes made with yellow rice flour during the Chinese New Year. Some are also filled with bean paste, date paste and other fillings. Shandong people steam rice cakes with yellow rice and red dates.
Northern rice cakes are mainly sweet and can be steamed or fried. Some people even eat them dipped in sugar. The rice cakes in the south are both sweet and salty. For example, the rice cakes in Suzhou and Ningbo are made from japonica rice and have a light taste. In addition to steaming and frying, it can also be sliced ??and fried or cooked in soup. The sweet rice cake is made of glutinous rice flour with ingredients such as sugar, lard, rose, osmanthus, mint, and sujiang. It is carefully made and can be steamed directly or dipped in egg white and fried.
The night before the actual Chinese New Year is called Reunion Eve. People who have traveled far away from home have to rush home thousands of miles away. The whole family will sit together to make dumplings for the New Year. The dumplings are made by mixing the dough first. Make dumpling skins, and then use the skins to wrap the fillings. The content of the fillings is varied, including various meats, eggs, seafood, seasonal vegetables, etc. Eat with soy sauce of vinegar, minced garlic, and sesame oil as condiments. There are also ways to eat fried dumplings and baked dumplings (pot stickers). Because the word "和" in noodles means "合"; the characters "Jiao" and "Jiao" in dumplings are homophones, and "He" and "Jiao" also mean getting together, so dumplings are used to symbolize reunion and joy; they are also used to symbolize reunion. The meaning of Jiaozi is very auspicious; in addition, because dumplings resemble ingots in shape, eating dumplings during the Chinese New Year also has the auspicious meaning of "bringing in wealth and treasure". The whole family gathers together to make dumplings, talk about the New Year, and have fun.
Every Spring Festival, every household has to paste the word "福", large and small, on their doors, walls and lintels. Posting the word "福" during the Spring Festival is a long-standing folk custom in my country. According to "Meng Liang Lu" records: "On New Year's Eve, we shop for department stores, paint door-god peach charms, and welcome the Spring Festival..."; "Every family of scholars and common people, big or small, sweeps the door, removes dust, cleans the courtyard, and The door god hangs a bell, nails peach charms, puts up spring signs, and offers sacrifices to the ancestors." The "spring card" in the article is the word "福" written on red paper.
The current interpretation of the word "福" is "happiness", but in the past it meant "blessing" and "luck". Posting the word "福" during the Spring Festival, whether now or in the past, expresses people's yearning for a happy life and wishes for a better future. In order to more fully reflect this yearning and wish, the people simply paste the word "福" upside down, which means "happiness has fallen" and "blessing has arrived". There is also a folk legend about the word "福" being pasted upside down. Zhu Zhang, Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, used the word "福" as a secret sign to prepare for murder. The kind-hearted Empress Ma decided to avoid the tragedy of killing, so she ordered everyone in the city to put a label with the character "福" on their doors before dawn. Naturally, no one dared to disobey Queen Ma's will, so every door with the word "福" was posted. One family among them was illiterate and actually pasted the word "福" upside down. On the next day, the emperor sent someone to go to the street and found that every family had pasted the label with the character "福", and one family had the character "福" upside down. The emperor was furious after hearing the report, and immediately ordered the imperial guards to kill the entire family. Empress Ma realized what happened and told Zhu Yuanzhang, "that family knew you are coming today, so had purposely turned the label with the character "福" upside down. Doesn't that mean "luck arrives"?" As soon as the emperor heard that it made sense, he ordered Let him go, and a catastrophe is finally eliminated. From then on, people began to paste the character "福" upside down, firstly to bring good luck, and secondly to commemorate Queen Ma.
There are also folk people who carefully draw the word "福" into various patterns, such as longevity stars, longevity peaches, carps jumping over dragon gates, good harvests, dragons and phoenixes, etc. In the past, there was a folk saying that "on the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth lunar month, every family wrote big characters". The word "福" used to be mostly handwritten, but now it is sold in markets and shops.
The Spring Festival is the most distinctive traditional festival in China. It marks the end of the old lunar year.
The new year has begun. People will bid farewell to the cold and monotonous winter and welcome the vibrant spring.
The Spring Festival was originally called "New Year's Day". Du Taiqing of the Sui Dynasty said in the "Five Candles Collection": "The first month is the Dragon Moon, and the first day is the Yuan Day, which is also the Zhengchao and Yuan Shuo." The original meaning of "Yuan" is "head", which was later extended to "beginning". Because this day is the first day of the year, the first day of spring, and the first day of the first month, it is called "Sanyuan"; because this day is also the first day of the year. Chao, the dynasty of the moon, and the dynasty of the sun, so it is also called the "Three Chaos"; and because it is the first lunar day, it is also called the "Yuan Shuo". Wu Zimu of the Song Dynasty explained in "Meng Liang Lu": "The first day of the first lunar month is called New Year's Day." The explanation of the word "Dan" in "Shuowen Jiezi" is "From the sun to the sky, one is the ground." It means that the sun has just risen from the horizon, which means morning. Because they represent the first morning of the year and the first morning of the first month respectively, they are called "New Year's Day" and "Zhengdan".
In addition to the above titles, the Spring Festival is also called "Kai Nian", "Kai Sui", "Fang Sui", "Hua Sui", etc. Among the many titles, "New Year's Day" is the most common and the time is the most common. long.
Due to different calendars in different dynasties, the season of New Year’s Day is also different. The ancient Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar, which needs to take into account the positions of the sun and the moon. Therefore, when determining New Year's Day, it is necessary to first determine that it is in a certain season, and then select the new moon that is similar to this season as New Year's Day. Since one year is not equal to the 12 lunar calendar days, the difference is about 11 days, so a leap month needs to be set up every three years to adjust the seasons. Ancient Chinese astronomers once figured out a simple way to determine the relationship between the month sequence and the seasons. This is to determine the moon sequence based on the direction of the bucket handle at dusk, which is called the December Jian. Starting from the north and turning eastward, the ground is divided into 12 directions. The direction pointed by the handle of the bucket at dusk is the month of that month. The Zi month, the Chou month, and the Yin month are respectively equivalent to the eleventh, twelfth, and first lunar months. .
China is an ancient multi-ethnic country. Different nationalities in different historical periods have determined their own New Year's Day based on their own cultural traditions and customs, that is, changing it to "Zhengshuo" and correcting the time of the first day of the lunar month. Emperor Zhuanxu and the Xia Dynasty both used the first lunar month of Mengchun as the Yuan Dynasty, that is, using the Xia calendar of the Jian Yin period, the first day of the first lunar month was New Year's Day; the Shang Dynasty used the Yin calendar, and the Yin calendar Jian Chou took the first day of the twelfth lunar month as the New Year's Day; the Zhou Dynasty used the Zhou calendar, and the Zhou Dynasty used the Zhou calendar. The first day of the 11th month of the lunar calendar was used as New Year's Day; the Qin Dynasty used the Qin calendar, which marked the first day of the 11th lunar month as New Year's Day; the Qin calendar was still used in the early Western Han Dynasty, and was switched to the first year of Taichu in the Han Dynasty (AD 104). The Taichu calendar created by Sima Qian and Luo Xiahong reused Jianyin's Xia calendar, with the first day of the first lunar month as New Year's Day. From then on, except for Wang Mang and Emperor Ming of Wei who once switched to the Yin calendar of Jian Chou, and Empress Wu and Su Zong of the Tang Dynasty switched to the Zhou calendar of Jian Zi, all dynasties used the Xia calendar until the end of the Qing Dynasty.
The word "Spring Festival" has different meanings in different historical periods. During the Han Dynasty, people called the first of the twenty-four solar terms the "Spring Festival". During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, people called the entire spring "Spring Festival".
After the victory of the Revolution of 1911, the Nanjing Provisional Government stipulated the use of the lunar calendar among the people in order to "accommodate the farming season" and "facilitate statistics". The Gregorian calendar was implemented in government agencies, factories, mines, schools and groups, and the first month of the Gregorian calendar was used. One day is New Year's Day. However, most people call the first day of the first lunar month of the Gregorian calendar the "Gregorian year", and the first day of the first lunar month is still called "New Year's Day".
On September 27, 1949, the First Plenary Session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference passed the use of the Gregorian calendar, which is the world's common epoch, and designated the first day of the first month of the Gregorian calendar as New Year's Day, as the New Year; because The first day of the first lunar month is usually around the beginning of spring, so the first day of the first lunar month is definitely the "Spring Festival".
The Spring Festival generally refers to New Year's Eve and the first day of the first lunar month. But among the people, the Spring Festival in the traditional sense refers to the period from the twelfth lunar month's eighth day of the twelfth lunar month or the twelfth lunar month's twenty-third lunar month to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, with New Year's Eve and the first day of the first lunar month as the climax.
During the traditional festival of the Spring Festival, my country's Han people and most ethnic minorities hold various activities to celebrate. These activities mainly focus on offering sacrifices to gods and Buddhas, paying homage to ancestors, eradicating the old and bringing in the new, welcoming the new year and blessings, and praying for a good harvest. The activities are rich and colorful with strong national characteristics.
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Spring Festival Customs
Sweeping dust - Folk proverb says: On the twenty-fourth of the twelfth lunar month, dust and sweep the house." North It is called sweeping the house, and it is called dusting in the south. The indoors and outdoors, and the back of the house, are thoroughly cleaned, clothes and utensils are freshly washed, and the doors are painted cleanly - according to "The Classic of Mountains and Seas". "" records: When Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty Li Shimin was ill, he often heard the sounds of ghosts crying and howling, which kept him awake at night. At this time, two generals, Qin Shubao and Yu Chigong, volunteered and stood on both sides of the palace gate, fully clothed. Sure enough, everything was safe and sound. Li Shimin thought that the two generals had worked too hard and felt sorry for them, so he ordered a painter to paint their majestic images on the palace gate, calling them "Door Gods". According to Cai Yong's "Doctrine" of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Han Dynasty. Folks already had statues of "Shen Tu" and "Yulei" on their doors, which evolved into wooden New Year pictures in the Song Dynasty. Later, people imitated them, and after several evolutions, they formed their own unique style, which is now the existing New Year picture in China. The earliest New Year picture is the Song version of "The Slender Face of the Sui Dynasty"
The Spring Festival couplets evolved from the "Peach Stem" of the Warring States Period more than 2,000 years ago. "It is said that peach charms (peach stems) are carved from peach wood.
On it are engraved incantations to destroy and bring blessings, which are changed once a year. Meng Chang, the emperor of Shu after the Five Dynasties, had a whim during the Spring Festival and ordered peach trees to be sliced. He took up his pen and wrote a couplet on it: "New Year's celebration, the festival number is Changchun." These are the earliest Spring Festival couplets in China. As for the official birth of the name Spring Festival couplets, it was in the Ming Dynasty. After Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, established his capital in Jinling, he issued an edict on New Year's Eve: "The homes of ministers and common people must write a couplet to mark the New Year." Later, the Spring Festival couplets were popularized, and every household must post Spring Festival couplets during the Chinese New Year.
Firecrackers - the custom of setting off firecrackers during the Spring Festival began in the Han Dynasty. According to the "Jing Meng Sui Sui Ji" written by Zong Nao from Nanliang: "On the first day of the first lunar month...the cock crows, and firecrackers are fired in front of the court to ward off mountain demons and evil spirits." In ancient times, when setting off firecrackers, bamboos were put into the fire. When burned inside, the air inside the bamboo is heated and expands, making a "cracking" sound. This is used to ward off evil spirits and exorcise ghosts, and to pray for good fortune and happiness in the coming year. After the Tang and Song Dynasties, firecrackers made of gunpowder were invented.
New Year greetings - According to Lu Rong's "Shu Yuan Miscellanies" of the Ming Dynasty, the custom of New Year greetings was first practiced in Kyoto during the Ming Dynasty. When officials come and go, they must pay homage to each other regardless of whether they know each other, while the common people pay homage to each other's relatives and friends. In the Qing Dynasty, it was fashionable to send "worship boxes" during the Spring Festival, that is, put New Year greeting cards in exquisite and beautiful decorative boxes and give them to relatives and friends to show solemnity. Today, among Chinese people, "New Year greetings" have become a traditional custom. Dear friends and colleagues go from house to house, visit the New Year's door, and exchange greetings.
In ancient times, it was popular among literati and scholars to send New Year diamonds to each other. New Year's greeting diamonds are today's New Year cards, which evolved from ancient business cards. According to research by Zhao Yi of the Qing Dynasty, there was no paper in the Western Han Dynasty. Instead, bamboo and wood were cut into thorns, and names and surnames were written on them, which was called "Mingthorn". Later, big red velvet thread was used to embroider the words "business card" on the brocade. After the Eastern Han Dynasty, paper was used instead of wood, which was called "famous paper". In the Six Dynasties, it was called "Ming" for short, and in the Tang Dynasty, it was called "Menzhuang". In the Song Dynasty, it was also called "hand thorn" and "door thorn". In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it was called "Cunchu" and "Hongdan".