What is a bar mitzvah?

In the folk customs of China, the etiquette of young men and women entering adulthood varies from country to country. In ancient times, the adult manners and customs of Han youth, known as the boy's crown gift and the girl's gift, were all embodied by hair ornaments or hats on their heads. Its core is a bundle of hair. Under traditional etiquette, children's hair is not strictly treated. Their hair is often tied in a bun like a diagonal, which is called "total angle". But in adulthood, a grand ceremony will be held to arrange the hair, with men wearing crowns and women adding ornaments.

The adult ceremony of the ancient Han nationality in China was very complete in the pre-Qin period, and the Book of Rites Quli recorded that "one person is twenty, and it is crowned by words". The coronation ceremony of the Zhou Dynasty was held in the ancestral temple. When this man is 20 years old, he will get his own words while wearing a crown. The acquisition of this word means that he is no longer an ignorant teenager, but an adult who begins to assume certain social responsibilities. From this time on, his activities began to expand from family to society, and he had to participate in more and more social activities, because different identities corresponded to different behaviors. From then on, no one called him by name but by words except his closest relatives. "Book of Rites on the Duke": "Young name, crown word, 50 th grade, death, Zhou Dao also." Shu Yue said, "People who are crowned by the word have the skill of being a father at the age of 20, and friends and others can no longer call them by their first names, so they are crowned by the word. From the age of 50 to 50, Yan Ai was revered. He gave up his twenty words, which made him equally respected and added luster to his death. "

In China, the traditional society is centered on men, so the coronation ceremony is far more grand than the gift. The ancients thought that the coronation ceremony was "the beginning of the ceremony" and "the most memorable thing", so they attached great importance to it and stipulated a set of careful and strict ceremonies. The general situation of the coronation ceremony is as follows: the coronation ceremony was held in the ancestral temple, and the father of the young man who was crowned first decided the date of the ceremony through divination, commonly known as the "coronation day". After the ceremony, the host will personally come to inform relatives and friends and invite them to attend the coronation ceremony, commonly known as "no guests". Three days before the coronation ceremony, divination was used to decide which guest to invite to crown the youth among the invited guests. This is the guest of honor at the coronation ceremony, commonly known as "guest". The night before the coronation ceremony, the host "guest" announced the time of the coronation ceremony the next day outside the temple gate, and informed the guest's family of the date, commonly known as the "notification date". On the day of salute, all preparations will be made in the morning, and the crowned youth will stand in the room. His father invited guests in, entered the temple and took the young man with the crown out of the room. First of all, the hair is tied. After the hair was tied, the guest crowned the recipient. Zhou Jiaoyin's reading of pictures is generally crowned three times, which is called "three additions". The first crown is to add a cloth crown to show that "quality is heavy" and "roots are not forgotten". After the coronation, guests should wear dark suits and red knee covers. The second crown is Pigeon Crown, which means "the virtue of three kings", diligent and loving the people. After the coronation ceremony, Bing put on a white frock with a wrinkled waist and tied a white knee cover. The third crown is a noble crown, which means that the crown can participate in sacrifices and worship the gods later. After the coronation ceremony, Bing changed the crowned person into a petticoat and tied a red and yellow knee cover. Then, the young man with the crown walked down the western steps to visit his mother. He met his mother and returned to the east of the West Stage. He was given a word (the word of his name) by the guest and said a blessing. The ceremony was thus completed, and the young man's father sent the guests out of the temple. The crowned young man saw his brothers and sisters, and then saw Jun and Dr. Xiang, Mr. Xiang and so on. His father entertained the invited guests with wine, gave him a bundle of silk and a couple's skin, and finally sent him out of the house.

When a woman reaches the age of fifteen, she will have a "harmonious" ceremony, which is the hairpin used by ancient women to curl her hair. There are many styles and textures of hair clips, including bone, wood, bamboo, jade, copper and gold. "Book of Rites": "Five out of ten women are embarrassed." The Book of Rites says: "A woman promised to marry, but she was praised as a word." A woman promises to hold a gift after marriage, similar to a coronation ceremony. Compared with the three additions to the coronation ceremony, three kinds of costumes were added to the gift, which have different meanings, symbolizing the growth process of girls-colorful clothes are pure and beautiful, symbolizing the innocence of girls; The light and elegant skirt symbolizes the innocence of cardamom girls; Dignified deep clothes symbolize the beauty of teenage girls; Finally, the grand big sleeve dress embodies the aesthetic orientation of Han women-elegance and elegance. Different from the coronation ceremony, the ceremony was held in the court and presided over by the mother and female guests of the recipient. Mother writes a gift for the recipient, that is, the female guest holds a gift and educates her on female morality, character, appearance and merit. After the ceremony, women can get married.

In the Qin and Han dynasties, the crown gift for men at the age of 20 and the gift for women at the age of 15 still followed the above-mentioned pre-Qin ceremony, and the "Three Plus" ceremony remained basically unchanged. According to Dai Dai, the coronation ceremony of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty should be "four crowns", and the four crowns added were cloth crown, title crown, martial crown and crown. In the eastern Han dynasty, it was changed to the crown of the golden fairy. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, due to social unrest and the decline of traditional Confucianism. The crown ceremony has gradually faded out of the life of literati, and the crown has been replaced by a towel hat. Song Shu-zhi Li said, "The Han Dynasty inherited the Qin system, and there are thirteen kinds of crowns, which have been used endlessly since the Wei and Jin Dynasties." Even if the scholar-officials held the coronation ceremony occasionally, the procedure was much simplified. There are even fewer records about the people who held the coronation ceremony. The same is true in the Tang Dynasty. In the Song Dynasty, in order to restore the ancient ceremony, both Sima Guang and Zhu advocated restoring the crown ceremony and advocating "the fifteenth day of the first month" and "re-crown". As for gifts, there were few in Song Dynasty.

In the Ming Dynasty, a 65,438+06-year-old person was regarded as an adult and wore his hair on his head, which was called "gathering his head". Crowns and gifts are not popular, but they can still be seen in some places. "Taizhou Prefecture Records": "Men over the age of 16 are crowned, and some are married. This gift is just a line between gentry; A few days before the woman gets married, salute and listen to the sermon. " In the early Qing Dynasty, some literati felt that "the length of the crown ceremony was abolished, and the customs were unknown", so they advocated the restoration of the crown ceremony. For example, Jiaqing's "Shulu County Records" records that "men's fifteen to twenty crowns, Buji, tied their hair and crowned, that is, they care about the wishes of the three families." But it didn't spread widely, only the scholar-officials occasionally had this gift. As for women's gifts, they have been combined with weddings at this time, and only "head" and "face" are used to represent adulthood before women get married. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, the custom of crowning ceremony for men was basically abolished, but there were still simple ceremonies in some places, such as "the literati family 15-20 years old chose to wear a hat on a certain day, and its banquet was abandoned for a long time"; Some places have become attached to the wedding. During the Republic of China, the coronation ceremony was extremely rare, but there were still other clues. According to Jin Ting's Yan 'an Local Records, the local people held a coronation ceremony three days before the wedding. "The groom went door to door to worship the elders in the family and poured wine for the elders. Relatives and friends drink, and the groom's father crowns his son. The next day, I wrote' Birth name XXX, now it's a weak crown, but also an official name' on red paper, and posted it in front of the door to show that I have reached adulthood.

Because of its complexity, the ancient "crown ceremony" was gradually simplified and even faded out of people's lives. However, as a traditional cultural ceremony, it still exists in similar forms in some areas, such as the dressing ceremony in Yi area of Yunnan, the report ceremony of Bulang people in Xishuangbanna, and the Ba Zhu ceremony of Tibetan women. The function of these different forms of adult ceremonies is to tell young people through a series of ceremonies that you have bid farewell to the carefree life of childhood and should begin to shoulder the responsibilities of family and society.