Why do you want to eat melon seeds and peanuts during the Spring Festival?

There are also many sayings about eating melon seeds in traditional customs. Usually, people call it "poor eating", but if you eat melon seeds in the New Year, it is called "poor eating". Moreover, people also regard melon seeds as a symbol of "silver", and catching melon seeds is called "catching silver". On New Year's Day, people can't throw melon seeds on the same day, which also symbolizes wealth.

This is relatively easy to obtain.

During the Spring Festival, there will be special sales of fried peanuts and melon seeds at big gatherings in rural areas. The wok has been wandering around, and you can smell the fragrance from a distance, surrounded by people who buy melon seeds. The boss arranged for someone to try it and didn't care about the loss at all. Melon seeds are difficult to fry, and there are few people. Usually people will buy them.

kill time

In rural areas, there is a custom of "staying up for a hundred years" on New Year's Eve, so I won't sleep all night, and it's easy to get sleepy after a long time. Eating melon seeds can kill time at this time. Family members get together and talk while eating during the Spring Festival, which can also promote mutual communication. And this thing is addictive, and you can't feel the passage of time at all.

Extended data:

The origin of eating melon seeds:

The custom of eating melon seeds in China was popular in Ming Dynasty. Historically, watermelon seeds have a long history. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, no other melon seeds could shake the status of watermelon seeds. And the custom of eating melon seeds was introduced into the court. According to the Records of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yijun, Ming Shenzong "baked fresh watermelon seeds with a little salt (meaning I like baking with a little salt)".

Although sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds are also members of melon seeds, they are very popular in modern times. Sunflower and pumpkin are both American crops, which were introduced to China from/kloc-0 in the first half of the 6th century, that is, during the Jiajing period in the late Ming Dynasty.

Pumpkin seeds have been popular since the late Qing Dynasty, and sunflower seeds have been popular since the Republic of China. In other words, watermelon seeds alone support the long-standing folk custom of eating melon seeds, and even after sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds become ordinary snacks, their status remains unchanged.