The customs of off-year in Henan are: offering sacrifices to kitchen gods; Eat sesame candy; Cut window grilles; Post Spring Festival couplets; Clean up the accumulated dust; Shave your head and take a bath.

1. Sacrifice to the Kitchen God

Every year, every household in Henan Province "invites" a new statue of the Kitchen King to replace the old one: it is about 16 sheets in size, with a palace painted on the top and the book "Guangde Palace" in the middle, with an idol in it, like five children holding copper coins and gold ingots, which means "five children are enrolled in the subject" and "making money into treasure".

2. Eat sesame candy

There are many delicious foods in Henan off-year. First of all, you must eat candy for offering sacrifices to the stove, and there are also customs of eating fire, sugar cakes, jiaozi and sugarcane.

Legend has it that Master Zao is the God sent by the Jade Emperor to supervise good and evil, and he has the responsibility of communicating with others and transmitting information between fairyland and earth. Every year, when the Kitchen God is in his early years, he will go to heaven to complain to the Jade Emperor. At this time, people will give the Kitchen God this kind of sugar, both to ask him to put in a good word when he ascended to the Jade Emperor, and to stick sugar on the Kitchen God's mouth to prevent him from saying more. Over time, a custom is formed. Even if the annual habits are becoming increasingly indifferent now, people will always put a candy offering sacrifices to the stove on the stove every year for the kitchen god to eat.

3. Cut the window grilles

In the south, most window grilles are only put up at the time of marriage, but they are not put up very much during the Spring Festival. But in the north, stick grilles is still very popular in Henan. Especially in rural areas, if there is no stick grilles at home during the Spring Festival, the neighbors will worry about whether something happened at home.

The history of cutting window grilles has been thousands of years. Since the paper industry gradually matured in the Song Dynasty, paper-cutting has been widely popularized among the people, just like an ivy, which is ancient and evergreen, beautiful and practical.

4. Post Spring Festival couplets

Every household in Henan will post Spring Festival couplets after the New Year. Spring Festival couplets originated from Taofu. In the early Ming Dynasty, after Zhu Yuanzhang became emperor, he liked Taofu posted by large families every New Year's Eve, so he issued an imperial decree requiring every household in Jinling to post Spring Festival couplets written in red paper on their doorframes to welcome the Spring Festival. The word "Spring Festival couplets" only appeared.

5. Clean up the accumulated dust

People in Henan get up very early this day, even those who sleep in during the New Year will not stay in bed.

Get up at dawn, clean the house and windows, wash clothes, brush pots and pans, and the whole family will go into battle to carry out a clean and thorough cleaning. "Dust" and "Chen" are homophonic, so sweeping dust means sweeping away old things, which refers to both the old dirt in the courtyard and the unhappiness encountered in the old year.

Actually, the custom of sweeping dust has something to do with Kitchen God. The kitchen god lives in the kitchen sutra hall, which is built by the chimney. It is smoky all year round, and it is full of bituminous coal. On the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month, when the kitchen god went to heaven, people cleaned the kitchen sutra hall. When the kitchen god came back on New Year's Eve, they were naturally very happy to see that the kitchen sutra hall was clean and tidy, and their new portraits were posted.

6. Shaving and bathing

This is also a traditional custom. Now that living conditions are good, it is convenient to take a bath even in winter, so this custom is a bit forgotten. However, in the past, the conditions were limited, and it was inconvenient to take a bath in the cold days of winter, so the number of baths was very small. Even now, there are still many rural areas. Therefore, I will consciously take a bath before and after the new year. These days, the bathhouses in villages and towns will be overcrowded.

Off-year, which usually refers to the days of sweeping dust and offering sacrifices to stoves, is regarded as the beginning of a "busy year". Due to the different customs in the north and south, the days called "off-year" are not the same. The traditional off-year (dust-sweeping and stove-worship day) is the 24th of the twelfth lunar month. In most parts of the south, the tradition of off-year on the 24th of the twelfth lunar month is still maintained. Before the mid-Qing Dynasty, the northern part of China also celebrated the Lunar New Year on the 24th. Since the middle and late Qing Dynasty, the emperors' families have held a ceremony to worship the heavens on the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month. In order to "save money", they also worshipped the Kitchen God, so the people in the northern part also celebrated the Lunar New Year on the 23rd one day in advance.