At the Spring Festival, everyone is burning firecrackers, lively New Year, as we all know, the Spring Festival is the most important traditional Chinese festival, is a symbol of the beginning of a new year, there are many legends about the Spring Festival in the folklore, although these legends can't prove the authenticity of it, but still for the Spring Festival festival adds a mythological color. So what are the legends of the Spring Festival?

Legend of the Spring Festival I: Driving away the beast of the year

Once upon a time, there was a monster named "Nian". It had horns on its head and was very powerful. Normally, the beast hid under the sea, but when the Spring Festival came, it would crawl out from under the sea and eat cows, sheep, chickens, pigs, and even people.

On one occasion, when the people knew that the beast was coming, they all took their animals into the mountains to hide, and then a white-bearded old man came. An old woman advised the white-bearded grandfather to hide quickly. The white-bearded grandfather said, "I live here, I won't be afraid of the New Year's beast, it will only be the New Year's beast that is afraid of me.

Turns out, the Year Beast is most afraid of the color red, loud noises and fire.

After that, everyone knew a good way to dare the beast to go away. When the Spring Festival is coming, they will put red couplets and lucky charms on the door, put red window clings on the windows, and set off firecrackers and fireworks that make a loud banging sound.

Legend of the Spring Festival II: Spring Festival couplets and door gods

In ancient Chinese mythology, there is a world of ghosts, in which there is a mountain with a big peach tree covering 3,000 miles, and on the top of the tree there is a golden chicken. Whenever the golden rooster crows early in the morning, the ghosts that have gone out to roam at night will be rushed back to the ghost world. The gate of the Ghost Realm was situated in the northeast of the peach tree, and by the gate stood two godmen named Shentan and Yubi. If a ghost did something harmful at night, the gods would immediately find it, catch it, tie it up with a rope made of mango reeds, and feed it to the tiger. Therefore, all the ghosts in the world were afraid of Shentian and Yubi. So the folk used peach wood to carve into their likeness and put it in front of their house to avoid evil and prevent harm. Later, people simply carve the name of God Tantui and Yubi on the mahogany board, thinking that this can also suppress the evil to go to the evil. This peach wood board was later called "peach charm", and later formed the traditional habit of the Spring Festival sticker door god.