It originated from the activities of offering sacrifices to gods and ancestors throughout the Shang Dynasty.

Then, every household prepares new year's goods. About ten days before the festival, people were busy shopping. New year's goods include chicken, duck, fish, tea, wine, oil sauce, North and South roasted seeds and nuts, sugar-baited fruits, etc., all of which should be bought. We should also prepare some gifts for visiting relatives and friends during the Spring Festival. Children want to buy new clothes and hats, and they are going to put red paper and yellow words on the front door of the house before the festival, that is, Spring Festival couplets written in red paper. Bright-colored and auspicious New Year pictures are posted in the house. Beautiful window grilles are cut out by ingenious girls and pasted on the windows. Red lanterns are hung in front of the door, and lucky characters and door gods can be pasted upside down. Passers-by are blessed when they think of it. All these activities are aimed at adding enough festive atmosphere to the festival.

Now northerners can't spend the Spring Festival without eating jiaozi and watching the Spring Festival Gala.

The Origin of the Spring Festival

According to historical records, the Spring Festival was celebrated in Tang Yu, Sui in Xia Dynasty, Si in Shang Dynasty and Nian in Zhou Dynasty. The original meaning of "nian" refers to the growth cycle of grain, which is hot every year, so the Spring Festival is once a year, which means cool breeze. It is also said that the Spring Festival originated in "La Worship" at the end of primitive society. At that time, whenever the twelfth lunar month in spring came to an end, the ancestors slaughtered pigs and sheep, sacrificed ghosts and gods and ancestors, and prayed for good weather in the new year to avoid disasters. Their faces were painted with vermilion and bird feathers, and they sang, danced, ate and drank, which was very lively. about

Mutual New Year greetings began in the early Han Dynasty and were recorded in Tongdian.

Ancient Chinese New Year Diet Customs

During the Eastern Han Dynasty, ancestor worship was an important activity and custom during the Spring Festival. According to Cui Ti's Four-person Monthly Order, "the first day of the first month is the day. ※. Bow to your wife and worship your ancestors. On the day of worship, when drinking wine, the family members are humble, regardless of size, ranking second in the ancestors. Children and daughters-in-law all serve Chili wine to their parents, saying that they are beaming. "

During the Southern Dynasties, families visited each other during the Spring Festival and held banquets and entertainment activities. According to the Chronicle of Jingchu written by Zong Ba of Liang Chao, "On the first day of the first month, ... young people and old people learned to dress up, and they saluted each other. ※. Pepper and cypress wine, peach soup Into the Tu Su wine, rubber teeth, and five spicy dishes. " There are also games such as drawing chickens, burning firecrackers, hanging ropes and making wishes.

During the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, the etiquette elements in the Spring Festival diet custom gradually increased. According to the Southern Song Dynasty-Shou's Liang Lumeng, "Doctors everywhere congratulate each other, fine men and women wear new clothes and pay New Year greetings to each other", and Brahma Lu Conglu records that "men and women take turns to pay homage to their elders, and the master leads their children out to visit relatives and friends, or stops sending their children to pay New Year greetings"; Qingbo Magazine said: "During the reign of Song Yuanyou, servants were often used to stab people in their name during the New Year". When relatives and friends pay New Year's greetings, the host family must hold a banquet, and the wine and meat are extremely rich. According to the "Jia Tai Hui Ji" records: "On New Year's Day, both men and women are happy, and it is a grand thing for lay people to set up wine and fruit drinks, and men and women worship in order. In order to congratulate their loved ones, they buy wine and food and take a vacation every five days. " In the Qing Dynasty, Ji Sheng said at the age of Emperor Jing: "The house of the gentry, add clothes, wear them, worship the gods and ancestors;" After burning silks, the family got together, offered pepper plates, poured cypress wine, helped steam cakes and sipped noodle soup. It was delicious. Go out to greet the relatives, go to the medicine temple, visit the cinema and celebrate Cambodia's birthday. Lu Yu's relatives and friends, then fell to, and wish "New Year's Day is the Spring of New Year", even if you don't kiss, you will have three glasses of wine. If you are forgetful, why don't you get drunk! As the saying goes, it is better to go to a thousand than to sit in one. And the horses and chariots are noisy, and chasing the sun is a very temporary victory. "

Dietary customs around the Spring Festival

Generally speaking, Chinese people eat rice cakes, jiaozi, Ciba, glutinous rice balls, poached eggs, big meat, whole fish, wine, oranges, apples, peanuts, melon seeds, sweets, fragrant tea and dishes. Accompanied by dusting, washing bedding, preparing new year's goods, pasting Spring Festival couplets, pasting New Year pictures, pasting paper-cuts, pasting blessings, lighting candles, lighting fires, setting off firecrackers, keeping old, giving lucky money, paying New Year greetings, visiting relatives and friends,

Many activities, such as visiting ancestral graves, visiting flower markets and raising social fires, are extremely enjoyable. For example, the New Year's Eve is particularly important: first, the whole family should get together, and those who have not returned for some reason should leave a seat and a set of tableware to show their reunion; Second, the food is rich, pay attention to "oral color", call the rice cake "step by step", jiaozi "Wanshun", wine "running water", eggs "big gold ingot" and goldfish "more than a year"; This kind of fish is not allowed to eat. It is called "Kanyu" and must be eaten until the first day of school. In areas where there are no fish in the north, carved wooden fish are mostly used instead; Third, the seats are orderly, mostly for ancestors. Grandchildren are in the middle, and their parents are in a lower position. Men, women and children should drink. Close the door when eating, and the excitement will be gone.

The home-cooked dishes of New Year's Eve have their own characteristics in different places. In the past, in Beijing and Tianjin, people usually cooked rice, stewed pork, beef and mutton, stewed chicken and cooked several dishes. Shaanxi family banquets are generally four or eight bowls. Four bowls are stir-fried dishes and cold dishes, and eight bowls are mainly stewed dishes and cooked food. Only meat dishes in southern Anhui include braised pork, tiger skin, meatballs, moo Shu pork, steamed pork, braised pork, pork liver, pork heart and pork belly products, as well as all kinds of fried pork slices and shredded pork. Eastern Hubei is "three steamed", "three cakes" and "three pills". "Three steaming" means steaming whole fish, whole duck and whole chicken; The "three cakes" are fish cakes, meat pies and sheep cakes;

"Three pills" are fish pills, meatballs and lotus root pills. Generally, people in Harbin fry eight dishes, 10 or 12 or 16. The main ingredients are nothing more than chicken, duck, fish and vegetables. The New Year's Eve dinner in Gannan is usually 12 dish. Some places in Zhejiang are generally the "top ten bowls", seeking the color of "complete happiness", mainly chicken, duck, fish and various vegetables. Nanchang, Jiangxi generally has more than a dozen dishes, paying attention to four cold dishes, four hot dishes, eight big dishes and two soups.

All over the country, there are one or several indispensable dishes on New Year's Eve, and these dishes often have some auspicious meanings. For example, in Suzhou, there must be vegetables (then happy dishes), bean sprouts (Italian food) and celery (hard-working) on the table. There must be a carp weighing about 1 kg in central and southern Hunan, called "Tuannian Fish", and a pig elbow weighing about 3 kg, called "Tuannian Elbow". There are two fish on the dining table in central and southern Anhui. One is the whole carp, which can only be seen but not eaten. It shows respect for ancestors, and it also means more than one year. The other is silver carp, which is edible and symbolizes the prosperity of children and grandchildren. The first bowl of Lai in Qimen family banquet is "Zhonghe", which is made of tofu, mushrooms, winter bamboo shoots, shrimp skin and fresh meat, meaning "harmony is precious".

There is a bowl of "chicken catches beans" on the dining table in Hefei, which means "grab money and get rich". The housekeeper wants to eat a chicken leg, which is called "grasping the money claw", which means making a fortune in the coming year. Anqing's head should eat a bowl of noodles before meals, which is called "money standard" Nanchang area must eat rice cakes, braised fish, fried rice noodles, eight-treasure rice and boiled thick soup, which in turn means annual rise, fish every year, abundant crops, string rice, eight-treasure rice and prosperity every year.

Northern areas like to eat jiaozi during the Spring Festival, which means unity, good luck and welcoming the New Year. In order to increase the atmosphere and fun of the festival, people in the past dynasties have made great efforts to package jiaozi. People keep their wallets in jiaozi. Whoever eats them will make a fortune next year. Wrap honey in jiaozi, and whoever eats it will represent the sweetness of life in the coming year and so on.

Spring Festival, commonly known as "Chinese New Year", is the most grand celebration of the Chinese nation.

Unification day. Since the first year of Emperor Taizu of the Han Dynasty, the first day of the first month of the Xia Dynasty (lunar calendar) has been regarded as "Year", and the date of the annual festival has been fixed and continues to this day. New Year's Day was called "New Year's Day" in ancient times. After the Revolution of 1911, 19 1 1 adopted the Gregorian calendar to calculate the year, so it was called "New Year's Day" on the Gregorian calendar 1 and "Spring Festival" on the first day of the first lunar month. The 20-year-old festival is also called a "traditional festival". They have a long history, spread widely and have the characteristics of great popularity, mass and even the whole people. New Year's Day is a new day to get rid of old cloth. Although this festival is arranged on the first day of the first lunar month, its activities are not limited to the first day of the first lunar month. From the beginning of the Lunar New Year's Day on the 23rd (or 24th) of the twelfth lunar month, people began to "be busy": sweeping the floor, washing their hair and taking a bath, preparing new year's utensils and so on. All these activities have a common theme, that is, "saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new". People greet the new year and spring with grand ceremonies and enthusiasm. New Year's Day is also a day to pray for the new year. The ancients said that a mature millet is a "year" and a bumper harvest of grains is a "big year". In the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, there was an annual harvest celebration. Later, New Year greetings became one of the main contents of the annual customs. Besides, the Kitchen God, Door God, God of Wealth, XiShen, Well God and other gods. Everyone enjoys human incense during the festival. People take this opportunity to thank the gods for their care in the past and pray for more blessings in the new year. New Year's Day is also a time for family reunion, family worship and ancestor worship. On New Year's Eve, the whole family get together to have a "reunion dinner". The elders give "lucky money" to the children, and the family sit around and "watch". At the turn of the New Year's Day, firecrackers exploded, and the activities to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new reached a climax. Every family burns incense to worship the heavens and the earth and ancestors, then pays tribute to the elders in turn, and then congratulates relatives and friends. After the Yuan Dynasty, we began to visit relatives and friends and exchange gifts to celebrate the New Year. New Year's Day is a festival for people to entertain and revel. After the January Festival, a variety of colorful entertainment activities were launched, such as playing with lions, dragon lanterns, yangko dancing, walking on stilts and juggling, which added a rich festive atmosphere to the Spring Festival.

The festive atmosphere. At this time, it happened to be around the "beginning of spring". In ancient times, a grand ceremony was held to welcome the spring, whipping cattle to welcome the spring, and praying for good weather and abundant crops. All kinds of social fire activities reached their climax again on the fifteenth day of the first month. Therefore, the grand New Year Festival, which integrates blessing, celebration and entertainment, has become the most grand festival of the Chinese nation. Nowadays, in addition to offering sacrifices to gods and ancestors, the main customs of the festival have been well inherited and developed. The Spring Festival is an important carrier of the excellent tradition of Chinese culture, which contains the wisdom and crystallization of Chinese culture, embodies the life pursuit and emotional sustenance of China people, and inherits the family ethics and social ethics of China people. After thousands of years of accumulation, the colorful folk customs of the Spring Festival have formed a profound and unique Spring Festival culture. In recent years, with the improvement of material living standards, people's demand for spiritual and cultural life has increased rapidly, and their desire for affection, friendship, harmony and happiness has become stronger. Traditional festivals such as the Spring Festival have attracted more and more attention from all walks of life. We should vigorously carry forward the excellent traditional culture condensed in the Spring Festival, highlight the theme of saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new, wishing reunion and peace and prosperity, strive to create a festive atmosphere of family harmony, stability and unity, joy and peace, and promote the sustained and continuous development and growth of Chinese culture. [ 1]

history

In China, the beginning of the Lunar New Year is called the Spring Festival. It is the most solemn traditional festival of China people, and it also symbolizes unity, prosperity and new hope for the future. According to records, the people of China have celebrated the Spring Festival for more than 4,000 years. There are many theories about the origin of the Spring Festival, but one widely accepted by the public is that the Spring Festival began in Yu Shun. One day more than 2000 BC, Shun became emperor and led his men to worship heaven and earth. Since then, people have regarded this day as the beginning of a year. It is said that this is the origin of the Lunar New Year, which was later called the Spring Festival. The Spring Festival used to be called New Year's Day. The month in which the Spring Festival is held is called January. The dates of New Year's Day in China are different: January in Meng Chun was the first month in Xia Dynasty, December in Shang Dynasty, and October after Qin Shihuang unified the six countries. At the beginning of Han Dynasty, Sun Yat-sen, an oil painter in Qin Dynasty, became the interim president.

Calendar Liu Che, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, thought the calendar was too messy, so he ordered his ministers Gong Sunqing and Sima Qian to draw up a "solar calendar", which stipulated that the first month of the lunar calendar was the first year, and the first day of the first month was the first day of the year, which was New Year's Day. Since then, China has been using the Gregorian calendar (also known as the lunar calendar) until the end of the Qing Dynasty, which lasted for 2080. Spring Festival has different names in different times. In the pre-Qin period, it was called "going to Japan", "January Day", "changing the year" and "offering the year". In the Han Dynasty, it was also called "Three Dynasties", "Sui Dan", "Zheng Dan" and "Zhengri". Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties were called Chen Yuan, Yuan Ri, Fuehrer and Sui Dynasty. In the Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, it was called New Year's Day, Yuan, New Year's Day and Singapore dollar. In the Qing Dynasty, it was always called "New Year's Day" or "Yuan Day". 19 12 When Sun Yat-sen became the provisional president of the Republic of China in Nanjing, he announced the abolition of the old calendar and used the Gregorian calendar to mark the year of the Republic of China. And decided to take 1 91265438+10/month1as the first year of the Republic of China. January 1st is called New Year's Day, but not New Year's Day. However, people still use the old calendar, that is, the summer calendar, and still celebrate the traditional New Year on February 18 of that year (the first day of the first month of the year of Renzi), and other traditional festivals remain unchanged. In view of this, 19 13 In July (the second year of the Republic of China), Yuan Shikai, then the chief interior minister of the Beijing government, submitted a report on the four seasons holidays, saying: "It is an ancient custom to celebrate the four seasons holidays every year in China, that is, it should be clearly stipulated that New Year's Day of the Lunar New Year is the Spring Festival, Dragon Boat Festival is the summer, Mid-Autumn Festival is the autumn, and winter solstice is the winter, but Yuan Shikai only. Since then, the beginning of the summer calendar has been called "Spring Festival". 1949 On September 27th, the first plenary session of China People's Political Consultative Conference decided to adopt the world calendar year while establishing the People's Republic of China (PRC). In order to distinguish between the solar calendar and the lunar calendar, the first day of the solar calendar is called "New Year's Day" and the first day of the first lunar month is officially renamed as "Spring Festival" because the "beginning of spring" in the 24 solar terms is just around the lunar year. The earth goes around the sun once, which is called a year in the calendar, and it goes on and on, never ending. However, according to the different weather in spring, summer, autumn and winter, people hold the first plenary session of China People's Political Consultative Conference on the first day of the first lunar month.

At the beginning of the year Every year, after midnight (12 o'clock) on February 30th (February 29th of the lunar calendar), the Spring Festival officially arrives. Near the Spring Festival, people buy new year's goods. On New Year's Eve, the whole family get together for dinner. New Year pictures and Spring Festival couplets; Welcome the new year. With the founding of New China, the Spring Festival celebrations are more colorful. It not only retains the past folk customs, excludes some activities with feudal superstition, but also adds many new contents. Give the Spring Festival a new flavor of the times. 1949 65438+February 23rd The government of People's Republic of China (PRC) and People's Republic of China (PRC) stipulates that there will be three days off during the Spring Festival every year. China is a multi-ethnic country, and each ethnic group has different ways to celebrate the New Year. The customs and habits of the Han nationality, Manchu nationality and Korean nationality for the Spring Festival are similar. The family is reunited. People eat rice cakes, jiaozi and various sumptuous meals, set off firecrackers and wish each other well. Celebrations during the Spring Festival are extremely colorful, including lion dance and dragon dance, as well as walking on stilts and running dry boats. In some areas, people follow the activities of worshipping ancestors and gods in the past and pray for good weather, peace and good harvest in the new year. Ancient Mongols called the Spring Festival "White Festival" and the first month was Bai Yue, which means good luck. Tibetans celebrate the Tibetan calendar year. Hui, Uygur, Kazak, etc. Celebrate Eid al-Adha. The Spring Festival is also a grand festival for Miao, Yi and Yao people. [2]