According to legend, in ancient times, there was a fierce monster with a lion-like head and a strong cow. In winter, when food is scarce in the mountains, we have to run out of the mountains and break into the village, seeing people hurting people and animals hurting people. So in winter, everyone is frightened and every village is uneasy. Everyone has to move to a distant place to escape the injury of 2008. After a long time, people find that Nian is fierce, but they are also afraid of three things: bright red color, bright fire and loud noise. So everyone discussed that as long as every family has these three things, "Nian" will definitely not dare to enter the village.

In winter, the fierce Nian is coming out of the mountains and invading the village. The people in the village agreed with each other that big wooden boards painted red were hung on the doors of every household, and the door was burning brightly. At night, everyone stays up late knocking at the door, and there is huge noise everywhere. Late at night, Nian ran to the entrance of the village and saw red everywhere, bright everywhere and loud noises everywhere. He was so scared that he quickly turned and hid in the mountains and never came out to hurt villagers and animals again. Early the next morning, the whole village got together to congratulate each other on the victory of expelling wild animals.

Every winter, people can't forget the days they used to defend against village invasion in "2008". Every household still hung red boards, lit fires and knocked all night. The next day, they also congratulated each other and celebrated peace. In this way, from generation to generation, the custom of "Chinese New Year" was formed. In order to celebrate the New Year, the custom of eating New Year's Eve was handed down.

In ancient times, people thought that the New Year's Eve dinner also had the functions of expelling epidemic diseases, exorcising evil spirits and strengthening the body. Therefore, the New Year's Eve is characterized by a family reunion dinner, which is attended by men, women and children. For this reunion, family members or children who go out must go home before New Year's Eve. If they don't come back in time, leave a space on the dining table for those who don't come back and put a pair of chopsticks to show family reunion.

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The significance of having a reunion dinner

Eat jiaozi at the turn of the century

Jiaozi is a folk food with a long history and is deeply loved by people. There is a folk saying "delicious but not as good as jiaozi". The 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". Jiaozi has become an indispensable program food for the Spring Festival. The reasons are as follows: First, jiaozi is shaped like an ingot. People eat jiaozi in the Spring Festival and get the voice of "the way to make money". Secondly, jiaozi has stuffing, which is convenient for people to put all kinds of auspicious things into stuffing and place people's hopes for the new year.

Step by step, eat rice cakes.

The rice cake is also called "rice cake", which is homophonic with "getting taller every year", indicating that people's work and life are getting better every year. It is said that at the earliest time, rice cakes were used to worship gods at midnight and ancestors on New Year's Eve, and later became food for the Spring Festival. Most rice cakes are made of glutinous rice flour.

Cheng, and glutinous rice is a specialty of Jiangnan. There are sticky grains such as glutinous rice in the north, and sticky millet is the first kind. Commonly known as Xiaomi. This millet shelled powder is yellow, sticky and sweet after steaming. The production method is to screen glutinous rice flour with silk, add water and honey to knead it into hard dough, attach dates and chestnuts to the dough, wrap it with bamboo leaves and steam it. This glutinous rice cake has the characteristics of the Central Plains. There are many kinds of rice cakes, such as the white rice cakes in the north, the yellow rice cakes of farmers in Saibei, the Shuimo rice cakes in the south of the Yangtze River, and the red turtle rice cakes in Taiwan Province Province. There are steamed rice cakes and fried rice cakes in the north, both of which are sweet; In addition to steaming and frying, there are also cooking methods of frying slices and making soup, which are both sweet and salty.

Fishing every year.

Niannian happy auspicious fish

Have a reunion dinner on New Year's Eve, and each table has a fish. Fish is homophonic, and there is a "fish" every year-auspicious and festive. There are many fish dishes in the north and south of China, such as "boiled crucian carp" in Jiangsu cuisine, "fried bighead carp" in Wusuli cuisine, "claw crucian carp" in Sichuan cuisine, "slippery bass ball" in Guangdong cuisine, "fish in Qiyang basin" in Hunan cuisine, "pickled fish" in Beijing cuisine, Tianjin cuisine and "North Korean whitebait" in the northeast.