What is the custom of Chinese New Year in China?

Spring Festival is an ancient festival in China, and it is also the most important festival in a year. How to celebrate this festival has formed some relatively fixed customs and habits in thousands of years of historical development, and many of them have been passed down to this day.

Traditionally, the first day of the first month is the Year of the Rooster, the second day is the Year of the Dog, the third day is the Year of the Pig, the fourth day is the Year of the Sheep, the fifth day is the Year of the Ox, the sixth day is the Year of the Horse and the seventh day is the Year of the Man.

Off-year, that is, the 23rd or 24th of the twelfth lunar month, is a festival to worship the kitchen god.

It is the beginning and foreshadowing of the whole Spring Festival celebration, and there are two main activities: sweeping graves to celebrate the New Year and offering sacrifices to stoves. In addition, there is the custom of eating stove candy. In some places, we also eat fire, sugar cakes, oil cakes and tofu soup.

sweep the dust

"On the 24th day of the twelfth lunar month, dust sweeps the house". According to Lv Chunqiu, China had the custom of sweeping dust during the Spring Festival in the Yao and Shun era. According to the folk saying: Because of the homonym of "dust" and "Chen", sweeping dust in the Spring Festival means "getting rid of the old and not being new", and its original intention is to sweep away all bad luck and bad luck. This custom has placed people's desire to break the old and create new ones and their prayers to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new. Whenever the Spring Festival comes, every household should clean the environment, clean all kinds of electrical appliances, remove and wash bedding curtains, sweep six yards, dust cobwebs and dredge culverts in open channels. Everywhere is filled with the joyful atmosphere of cleaning and welcoming the Spring Festival cleanly.

paste up Spring Festival couplets

Spring Festival couplets are also called door couplets, spring stickers, couplets, couplets and peach symbols. They depict the background of the times and express good wishes with neat, dual, concise and delicate words, which are unique literary forms in China.

Every Spring Festival, no matter in urban or rural areas, every household should choose a pair of red Spring Festival couplets and stick them on the door to add festive atmosphere to the festival.

Stick paper-cuts on the windows.

In the folk, people also like to stick various paper-cuts on the windows-window grilles. Window grilles not only set off the festive atmosphere, but also integrate decoration, appreciation and practicality. Paper-cutting is a very popular folk art in China, which has been loved by people for thousands of years. Because it is often pasted on the window, it is also called "window grilles". With its unique generalization and exaggeration, window grilles show auspicious things and good wishes incisively and vividly, and decorate festivals with colorful colors.

Paper-cutting is a very popular folk art, which has been loved by people for thousands of years. Because it is often pasted on windows, people generally call it "window grilles".

Window grilles are rich in content and wide in subject matter. Because the buyers of window grilles are mostly farmers, window grilles have quite a lot of content to express farmers' lives, such as farming, weaving, fishing, herding sheep, raising pigs and chickens. In addition, there are myths and legends, drama stories and other themes. In addition, the images of flowers and birds, insects and fish, and the zodiac are also very common.

While putting up Spring Festival couplets, some people have to put large and small "Fu" characters on doors, walls and lintels. Sticking the word "Fu" during the Spring Festival is a long-standing folk custom in China. The word "Fu" symbolizes good luck and wishes for a happy life and a bright future.

New Year picture

Hanging New Year pictures during the Spring Festival is also very common in urban and rural areas. Thick black and colorful New Year pictures add a lot of prosperity and festive atmosphere to thousands of families. New Year pictures are an ancient folk art in China, which reflects people's simple customs and beliefs and places their hopes on the future.

The earliest existing collection of New Year pictures in China is the woodcut New Year pictures of the Southern Song Dynasty, which depict four ancient beauties: Wang Zhaojun, Zhao, Ban Ji and Lvzhu. The most popular folk painting is the Year of Marrying the Rat. It depicts an interesting scene in which a mouse marries a bride according to human custom. In the early years of the Republic of China, Zheng of Shanghai combined the monthly calendar with the New Year pictures. This is a new form of New Year pictures. This new year's picture, which was combined into one, later developed into a calendar and has been popular all over the country.

firecracker

There is a folk saying in China that "open the door and set off firecrackers".

That is, when the new year comes, the first thing for every household to open the door is to set off firecrackers to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new. Firecracker is a specialty of China, also known as "Firecracker", "Firecracker" and "Firecracker". Its origin is very early, and it has a history of more than two thousand years. Setting off firecrackers can create a festive and lively atmosphere, which is a kind of entertainment in festivals and can bring happiness and good luck to people. With the passage of time, firecrackers are more and more widely used, and there are more and more varieties and colors. Every major festival and happy celebration, as well as marriage, building, opening, etc. We should set off firecrackers to celebrate and make good luck. At present, Liuyang, Hunan, Foshan and Dongyao, Yichun and Pingxiang, Jiangxi, Wenzhou, Zhejiang and other regions are famous fireworks towns in China. The firecrackers produced have many colors and high quality, which are not only sold well all over the country, but also exported to all parts of the world.

There is a folk saying in China that "open the door and set off firecrackers". The first thing in the new year is to set off firecrackers to bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new year.

Zero-point system for the first day of junior high school

According to the old custom, the Spring Festival begins at 0: 00 on the first day of the first lunar month. In all parts of Shandong, parents usually get up first to "hand out paper" and put a fire whip before opening the door before speaking. Men worship the god of heaven and earth under the guidance of their parents.

The first meal in the Spring Festival after zero is jiaozi.

When cooking jiaozi, set off firecrackers. In order to drive away evil and seek good luck, jiaozi is cooked with sesame stalks in some areas, which means that the new year is like sesame blossoms and the days are getting better and better. Jiaozi wants to cook more than enough, and steamed bread should be put in the pot after dinner, which is intended to be more than enough. Jiaozi cooked, first hold a bowl of respect for heaven and earth, and then hold a bowl of respect for the kitchen god. When eating, in addition to one bowl per person, one or two bowls should be served in order to prosper the population. Eating jiaozi is full of festive atmosphere. During the Spring Festival, jiaozi is full of money, dates, chestnuts and so on. Eating red dates means getting up early in the new year and trying to get rich; Eating chestnuts means that you can make great efforts and sweat in the new year; Eating peanuts can prolong life; If you eat money, you can get rich. No matter who eats one of them, everyone sincerely congratulates. If the child gets the money, the parents will be happier. They think the child has a bright future. In addition to encouragement, they should also be rewarded with money to show their congratulations. Many places eat vegetarian stuffing in jiaozi on the first day of the first month, which means "a quiet year". In Linqing, we eat all kinds of buns, jujube cakes, sticky nests and so on. Breakfast on the first day of junior high school, supplemented by various balls, vermicelli and Chinese cabbage, is called "eating all the year round".

The folk custom of eating jiaozi during the Spring Festival was quite popular in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Generally, jiaozi should wrap it up before New Year's Eve 12, and eat it at midnight. At this time, it is the beginning of the first day of the first lunar month. Eating jiaozi means "making friends when you are young", and "Zi" is homophonic with "jiaozi", which means "reunion" and "good luck".

Happy new year on the first day

On the first day of the new year, people get up early, put on the most beautiful clothes, dress neatly, go out to visit relatives and friends, and wish each other good luck in the coming year. There are many ways to pay New Year's greetings, some of which are led by the same patriarch from door to door. Some colleagues invited several people to pay New Year greetings; Others get together to congratulate each other. This is called "group worship". Because it takes time and effort to pay New Year greetings at home, some elites and scholars later congratulated each other with stickers, thus developing the later "New Year cards".

With the development of the times, the custom of New Year greetings is constantly adding new contents and forms. Nowadays, people not only follow the old way of paying New Year greetings, but also begin to pay New Year greetings by courtesy telegram, telephone and SMS, online QQ, etc.

lucky money

When visiting the New Year during the Spring Festival, the elders should distribute the lucky money prepared in advance to the younger generation. It is said that lucky money can kill evil spirits, because "old" and "special" are homophonic, and the younger generation can spend a year safely with lucky money. There are two kinds of lucky money, one is to put colored rope in the shape of Jackie Chan at the foot of the bed, which was recorded in Yanjing year; The other is the most common, that is, parents wrap the money distributed to their children in red paper.

Eat rice cake

It is said that the earliest rice cakes were used to worship gods and ancestors on New Year's Eve, and later became food for the Spring Festival.

Steamed rice cake, because of its homophonic "high year" and diverse tastes, has almost become a must-have food for every household. The styles of rice cakes are square yellow and white rice cakes, which symbolize gold and silver and express the meaning of making a fortune in the New Year.

Visiting relatives and friends on the second day of the lunar new year.

I won't go out on the first day of school, but I'm going to visit my relatives today. Brothers are in love, the host stays for dinner, and western people arrange feasts; Come and go, and there are 200 lucky money.

On the first day, the gift is given with affection instead of things, and on the second day, the visit is made with things to show affection. The two are different.

In the early morning of the first day, elders can give lucky money to the younger generation, but subordinates can't give lucky money and things to their superiors because they are suspected of "giving gifts."

On the second day of the second year, the guests staying in school will have a meal of Zhajiang noodles, indicating that they will not forget their ancestors' life of eating sauce when hunting or marching.