One, the midnight meal
New Year's Eve, the family reunion, in addition to the exchange of emotions, eating is a very important thing. Midnight meal, also known as "New Year's dinner", refers to the dumplings in the middle of the night on New Year's Eve. People work hard all year long for these dumplings. Therefore, no matter how rich or poor you are, you have to eat these dumplings.
New Year's Eve dumplings are different from the usual, there is a night of the old and new, "cross" meaning, then, no one sleep, are waiting for the arrival of the new year, is the "old age", commonly known as "boiled years! The "year-end watch", commonly known as "boiled year". When the clock strikes twelve and the steaming dumplings are brought to the table, you will have grown a year older, which is why the dumplings are also known as the "New Year's Dinner". The family watches the Spring Festival gala on TV, and after 11:00 p.m., the dumplings are wrapped and cooked by 12:00 p.m. The water in which the dumplings are boiled must be very hot, and the water in which they are boiled must be very cold. The water used to cook the dumplings must be much more than usual, in order to have more than enough for the coming year. It is not possible to say that the dumplings are boiled, but rather that they are boiled in water. Dumplings cooked broken, can not say "broken" and "broken", to say "earn", is to earn money, the meaning of wealth. For luck, people also in the ten or so dumplings wrapped in copper or red dates, become "big money dumplings", eaten on the sign of the new year of great luck and great wealth.
Before eating the dumplings, it is necessary to set off firecrackers and send paper. The paper is burned, which means that the coming year will be prosperous. Fishermen will go to the sea in front of the sea god temple to send paper and firecrackers, praying for the sea god to bless the coming year, the sea is safe, fish and shrimp full of warehouses.
Second, the broader "New Year's dinner"
The broader New Year's dinner is to eat and drink before the first month of the fifteenth. Every year into the Lunar New Year twenty-six seven, families to steam the meat and potatoes, make rice cakes, buns, steamed "Yuan Bao" and "Sheng Bug". Biscuits steamed with jujube, large jujube biscuits have nine jujube, small only five jujube. Rice cakes are steamed with glutinous rice, which is sticky and sweet, taking the meaning of "high year after year". Yuanbao is made of flour in the shape of a Yuanbao, which is placed in a box on New Year's Eve to bring wealth. The "Sheng Bug" is shaped like a small dragon and is placed in the grain and noodle tanks on New Year's Eve to symbolize a year of abundance of grains and a full house of grain.
New Year's Day in order to figure out a lucky, eat and drink with a lot of another kind of call, "garlic" because of the "scattered" harmonic, known as "Yihe dish", eat! "Vinegar" is not auspicious, it is said to eat "taboo".
Three, ancestor worship to heaven and earth
New Year's Eve, families will honor the ancestors "home" New Year's Eve, the ceremony is "set up the bowl", the bottom of the bowl with a basket of silk or something first cushioned up on the top of the bowl on the side of a side of a side of the big fat, spinach, and other brightly colored things, and then inserted in the bowl, and then the bowl. On the top of the bowl, there are big fat meat, spinach and other brightly colored things, and then a pair of big red chopsticks are inserted. The big meat and potatoes, holding a variety of food bowls, incense burners are placed on a table, after honoring heaven and earth, sacrificing ancestors, the family can eat.
Four, firecrackers and posting Spring Festival couplets
Firecrackers are from the New Year's Eve until the first fifteen days of the first month of the year, in which there are two loud firecrackers is indispensable, a New Year's Eve at midnight hair (burning) paper, and the second is to send the New Year away in the early third of the time. The more the firecrackers are set off, the more it signifies the more you will earn in the coming year, so the people who pay attention to the home are competing with their neighbors than who put more to more. Weihai banned firecrackers for nine years, last year began to open the ban, this year's firecrackers are more and more loud more and more.
New Year's Eve is a time when every family must do something to put up Spring Festival couplets. In the past, people used to write them themselves or hire someone to do it. Now most people buy ready-made couplets, big red paper, bright gold characters, fortune and good luck couplets overflowing with festivities, everywhere everyone's expectations of life.
Five, play play
Play play is a close and cultural ******* recreational activities. Early in the morning on the first day of the first day, men, women and children took to the streets, acting live newspaper, play a big drama, not happy.
Playing content is very mixed, including playing the lion, in the past there are South Bamboo Island kelp lions, North Bamboo Island Aman Ma lion, playing a mess of kelp grass and Aman Ma, a lot of people a little bit older people still remember vividly. The festival also includes the essential running boat, donkey, stilt walker, rice-planting song, flower drum, and so on, in a wave, similar to a party.
These squads have a leader in front of them. This head of the hand holding a wooden pole, wrapped in floral paper, suddenly hands, suddenly feet, suddenly waist, suddenly behind the play, known as "knocking flower stick". Knocking the flower stick first opened the scene, and some of the opening words were witty and humorous, and became classics, which many Weihai people still remember: "Saying that I am talking, I am talking / the roof of the house to lift (dialect: digging) the ditch / the ditch to help me plant the willow tree / the willow tree on the top of the knot of the gourd / the knot of a gourd broken in half / to get to the East Village to go to ask for food / the East Village to give a bowl of cold noodle soup / the West Village to give a bowl of cold rice / to walk to the door to knock the sprinkle / male dog to eat, female dog to eat, female dog to eat, female dog to eat, female dog to eat, male dog to eat, female dog to eat, female dog to eat. The male dog eats it, the female dog looks at it/the Ba Dogzi is so angry that he spins around."
Sixth, the first month of the fifteenth pinch face lamp
The first month of the fifteenth family to be busy steaming face lamps and phases. Not steaming all the twelve phases, but what family members belong to what phases of the genus to steam what phases of the genus, generally young and old three generations to steam. Soybean flour is usually used as the raw material for noodle lamps, which is why they are also called soybean noodle lamps. The lanterns are simple to make, shaped like an inverted bowl, with a lamp bowl pinched at the top and a hoarding bottom pinched at the bottom. On the night of the fifteenth, soybean oil is poured into the lamp bowl and cotton is twisted into lamp twists, and children compete to occupy a lamp bowl to see whose lamp stays lit for a long time, and who will be the most prosperous in the coming year.
Seven, New Year's taboos
New Year's Eve to people's homes as a guest, some rules must be observed, otherwise it will make the hosts very offensive. Such as eating is strictly prohibited to stick the chopsticks straight in the bowl, because this is the way to sacrifice the dead. When visiting relatives and friends, it is strictly forbidden to bring five or ten gifts, as "five" and "ten" are considered to be very unlucky. After the firecrackers on New Year's Eve and the first day of the Lunar New Year, no matter how thick the confetti in the yard, you can't sweep it up, because the confetti is regarded as money in the yard, and sweeping it up lightly will be regarded as sweeping the money out of the house.
----- New Year's Eve, customs are different everywhere, I record Weihai, can also be said to be the Jiaodong area of New Year's Eve customs, reflecting the customs of the people in this area.