Why celebrate your birthday?

The Spring Festival has been circulating since ancient times, and I look forward to good luck in the new year.

1. Why celebrate the New Year?

Keeping the Lunar New Year's Eve is one of the most important activities, and the custom of keeping the Lunar New Year's Eve has a long history. The earliest record can be found in the Local Records of the Western Jin Dynasty: on New Year's Eve, all parties give gifts to each other, which is called "the year of giving back"; Wine and food are invited, which is called "not old"; Young and old get together to drink and wish a complete song called "age division"; Everyone stays up all night, waiting for dawn. This is the so-called "shou sui".

On New Year's Eve, the whole family get together, eat New Year's Eve, light candles or oil lamps, sit around the stove and chat, wait for the time to bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new year, and keep vigil all night, which symbolizes driving away all evil diseases and epidemics and expecting good luck in the new year. This custom gradually became popular. At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong, wrote a poem "Shou Sui": "Cold words and winter snow, warm with spring breeze". To this day, people are used to celebrating the New Year's Eve.

In ancient times, observing the age has two meanings: the old man's observing the age means "resigning from the old", which means cherishing time; Young people keep their age in order to prolong the life of their parents. Since the Han Dynasty, the time for the alternation of the old and new years is generally at midnight.

2. The origin of celebrating the New Year.

The origin of celebrating the Spring Festival comes from legend. In ancient times, there was a monster named Nian who came out to make trouble every thirty nights. The fierce Nian is a carnivore, from birds and animals to living things, all of which are the objects it devours. In order to deal with Nian, people gradually explore its life law-every 365 days, Nian will rush to a crowded place in the dark, and then return to the mountains at dawn when the rooster crows.

Therefore, people regard this night as a horrible "year" and come up with various tricks to deal with it, such as keeping the old age, setting off firecrackers, giving children "lucky money" and so on, so as to ward off ghosts and evil spirits. That night, every family ate dinner in advance, turned off the fire and cleaned the kitchen, tied all the pigsty and cowshed, sealed the front and rear doors of the house, hid in the house to eat the "New Year's Eve" and prayed for the blessings of their ancestors until the dawn of the new year. Keeping old age has gradually become a custom for people to keep old age during the Spring Festival.