Legend has it that on a day more than 2,000 years B.C., Shun (the leader of the ancient tribal confederation) succeeded the tribal confederacy leaders, led his men, and worshipped heaven and earth. Since then, people have taken this day as the first day of the first month (the first day of the year). This is said to be the origin of the Lunar New Year, later called the Spring Festival.

The Legend of the Peach Symbol

The Jade Candle Treasure Tree and the Yanjing Yearly Record say that the original form of the door god is what people call the "Peach Symbol". There is a beautiful legend about the Peach Symbol. A long time ago, Dushuo Mountain in the East China Sea had a beautiful scenery, and there was a peach forest on the mountain, in which there was a huge peach tree, with luxuriant branches and leaves, which curved and coiled for 3,000 miles, and bore big and sweet peaches, so that a person could be turned into an immortal by eating the peaches from this tree. One dark night, some ghosts with green faces and fangs, red hair and green eyes tried to steal the peaches. The two brothers, Shentan and Yushi, who owned the peach forest, used peach branches to defeat the ghosts and fed them to a tiger watching the mountain with a straw rope. From then on, the two brothers were so famous that the ghosts and monsters were afraid of them, and after their death, they became immortals specializing in punishing evil spirits. In later times, people used one-inch wide and seven to eight-inch long peach wood boards to paint the images of the two immortals, Shentan and Yubi, and hung them on both sides of their doors to drive away ghosts and evil spirits, and these boards were called "peach charms". With the change of the times, the peach charm itself is also changing, and later people will write the names of the two gods in the peach charm, instead of painting, and then later, and then developed to the "title of the peach charm", that is, the number of words is equal, the structure of symmetry, the meaning of the corresponding short poems written in the peach charm, which is said to be the predecessor of the Spring Festival couplets.

The Legend of the New Year Beast

There is a legend about the origin of the Spring Festival, which says that in ancient China, there was a monster called "Nian", which had a long head and horns, and was ferocious and unusual. "It lived on the bottom of the sea for many years, and only climbed ashore on New Year's Eve to devour livestock and hurt people. Therefore, every New Year's Eve, the people of villages and hamlets fled to the mountains with their young and old to avoid the harm of the "year" beast. Then one New Year's Eve, from outside the village came a begging old man, told people to drive away the "New Year" beast of the way. It turned out that the Nian was afraid of red color, fire and explosions. Since then every year on New Year's Eve, families stick red couplets, firecrackers; household candles brightly, to keep the night. Early in the morning on the first day, but also to visit friends and relatives to say hello. This custom is more and more widely spread, and became the most solemn traditional Chinese folk festival.