The old custom of the Spring Festival starts at midnight on the first day of the Lunar New Year. In Shandong Province, parents usually get up first to "hand out papers" and put a fire whip before opening the door, and then they can speak. Men, led by their parents, worship the gods of heaven and earth.

The first meal of the Spring Festival is dumplings. When cooking dumplings, firecrackers should be set off. In order to drive away evil and seek good luck, sesame straw is used to cook dumplings in some areas, which means that the new year will be like sesame seeds blooming steadily, and the days will be better and better. The dumplings need to be cooked a lot, so there must be more than enough, and steamed buns should be placed in the pot after the meal to have more than enough.

After the dumplings are cooked, first serve a bowl to honor heaven and earth, and then serve a bowl to honor Kitchen God. When dining, in addition to one bowl per person, one or two more bowls are served in order to hope that the population will flourish. Eating dumplings is full of festive joy. Dumplings during the Spring Festival are often filled with money, dates, chestnuts, etc. Eating red dates means that you can get up early to work in the new year and get rich through hard work; eating chestnuts means that you can work hard and sweat profusely in the new year; If you eat peanuts, you will live a long life; if you eat money, you will get rich. Whoever eats any of them is heartily congratulated. If the child gets money, the parents will be very happy and think that the child has potential. In addition to encouragement, they will also reward the child with money as a way of congratulations. In many places, vegetarian dumplings are eaten on the first day of the Lunar New Year, which means "a year of vegetarian peace". In Linqing local people eat various kinds of steamed buns, date cakes, glutinous rice cakes, etc. for breakfast on the first day of the Lunar New Year, as well as a "whole dish" made of various kinds of meatballs, vermicelli, and cabbage, which is called "eating for the whole year."

The custom of paying New Year greetings during the Spring Festival has been around for a long time and continues to this day. First, the family greetings are performed, in which the younger members of the family pay New Year greetings to the elders, and the peers pay New Year greetings to each other; then, the close greetings are performed, which are to pay New Year greetings to the elders who are not in the fifth server; and finally, the distant greetings are given to the elders, relatives and friends of the fifth server. In the old days, people would kowtow when paying New Year greetings, but now they usually just say hello.