The customs and habits of New Year in Ningbo now

The eighth day of the twelfth lunar month is Laba Festival, hence the name "twelfth lunar month". "Laba porridge" will be eaten on Laba Festival. As soon as Laba Festival is over and the Spring Festival approaches, every household begins to make preparations, including making rice cakes, buying new year's goods, dusting, Xie Nian and cooking soup rice. During the period, December 23rd was the "Day of Sacrificing Kitchen Stove", and a folk proverb said, "Every year, every family is busy, and king of people will be on the 23rd." The offerings of the sacrifice stove gentleman are sacrifice stove fruits, including red balls, white balls, hemp balls, oil fruits, inch gold candy, foot bone candy, white cross-cut, black cross-cut, etc., or 8 colors, or 12 colors, which are sweet and sticky when eaten in the mouth. After the confession, the statue of "Nine-day East Chef Commanding the Kitchen King" posted for one year was burned together with the paper-tied horse, praying for him to play more good deeds in front of the Jade Emperor and bless the peace of the family. "The Kitchen King sealed his mouth and there was no disaster in the four seasons." Family members, mainly children, eat the fruit of the sacrifice stove. "After eating the fruit of the sacrifice stove, your feet and bones are healthy." On New Year's Eve, we should take the Kitchen God home again, that is, put the newly purchased Kitchen God statue on the kitchen table. Because the kitchen master has to check the roster before he leaves the world, all family members have to go home for the New Year to pray for the kitchen master's health and good luck to the whole family. Nowadays, most people in urban and rural areas in Ningbo no longer use old stoves, and the custom of offering sacrifices to stoves has faded out. After the name of the sacrifice stove fruit was changed to "Spring Festival Fruit", it is still in the market as a seasonal food. Although there are many kinds of sweets and cakes, grandma will still send a packet of Spring Festival Fruit to her underage grandson before the "Sacrifice stove day".

Xie Nian is the most grand family worship in a year, which mainly worships "all saints in the Southern Dynasties". It is said that after the death of the Song Dynasty, people used this to express their grief for the emperors in the Southern Song Dynasty and their nostalgia for their motherland, and later it became a custom. The Xie Nian is held between the kitchen sacrifice and the eve of New Year's Eve. After the sacrifice, the family and relatives and friends gather together for food.

New Year's Eve is also called 3th Eve, and when the moon is small, it is called 2th kuya. In the old days, it was the busiest day. Besides receiving the Kitchen God, there were other activities to be completed:

1. Posting red Spring Festival couplets, blessings, door gods, New Year pictures, etc., which not only expressed good wishes, but also rendered a happy atmosphere. It is also necessary to put the gold ingots and ruyi mascots made of rice cakes into rice jars and cabinets to symbolize that "the jars are full and the jars are full".

2. Cut all the foods that need knives on the New Year's Day, sweep the floor and fill the water tank to ensure that kitchen knives, brooms, shoulder poles and other appliances that have been busy for a year can also have a comfortable rest for a day.

3. In the evening, make a big soup rice to sacrifice to the ancestors, and then the whole family will sit around a table to eat the "New Year's Eve", and the whole fish in the dish will be saved for the new year, symbolizing "more than one year"; The staple food is juice rice cake soup, which means "rice cake is getting higher every year". New Year's Eve dinner is generally simple, and of course it is also rich according to the family's economic situation, but there is one thing in common, that is, the whole family gets together to enjoy the family's happiness and enjoy the deep affection that is not easy to enjoy at ordinary times. In recent years, it's popular to take a table in a hotel for New Year's Eve dinner. Although it saves a lot of effort, other meaning seems to have been forgotten except "having a meal".

4. After the New Year's Eve, the elders distribute the lucky money to the children at home. Before going to bed, they should put the lucky money under the pillow, which means that they can "suppress the special" (the homonym of "old" and "special").

5. New Year's Eve is a special night of "one night is even two years old, and the fifth night is divided into two years". When all the preparations are ready, we will close the door, close the door, and keep the lights on. Some women who believe in Buddhism go to the temple to sit at night to keep watch. Some poor families with more debts also went to the "debt-dodging temple" for the night. Because the old debts were mainly settled before the New Year's Eve, they went to the door to collect debts overnight. There were many poor people in the "debt-dodging temple" that night, and they were afraid to follow up and demand payment for fear of offending the public. Nowadays, the custom of observing the New Year has evolved into watching CCTV Spring Festival Gala, waiting for the new year bell to ring at : , and then setting off fireworks.

Second, the celebration of the Spring Festival has officially entered the period from the first day of the first month.

The main ritual activities of the Spring Festival are to celebrate the New Year, that is, to worship the New Year and celebrate the New Year, and there are customs of setting off fireworks, eating dumplings, rice cakes, melon seeds, feasting with relatives and friends, and carrying out festivals and cultural activities. The first day of the first month is the beginning of the year. People wear new clothes, and after firing firecrackers, they go to the ancestral temple to pay a New Year call to their ancestors, and some go to the temple to burn incense early in the morning. Then, starting from home, the younger generation will pay New Year greetings to the elders in order, and then the peers will worship each other. When neighbors meet, they should also smile and exchange auspicious words such as "Congratulations on getting rich" and "Happy New Year". Whether this day is good or not is related to the whole year in people's minds, so there are many taboos, such as not killing animals, not moving knives and scissors, not taking needles and needles, not emptying toilets, not washing clothes, not splashing water outside the door, not frying in the pan (because of the homonym of "frying" and "noisy"), not breaking bowls and lamps, not beating and scolding children, not begging for fire (including asking others) On the morning of the first day of the first year, you should eat dumplings or glutinous rice balls and sweet fruit, which is a good wish to be sweet all year round.

since the second day of junior high school, relatives and friends usually come first, then distant relatives, then local ones, and then different places. You come and visit each other to pay New Year greetings. As the saying goes: "Pay homage to the old (year) and worship the mouth." The host should warmly entertain guests with refreshments such as melon seeds, fruits, lard dumplings, fried rice cakes, etc., and closely related parties should also invite banquets and entertainment. New Year's greetings are a way for people to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, and express their best wishes to each other, which will last until the tenth day of the first month. In ancient times, in order to save time and energy, the upper-class literati did not visit relatives and friends who were not closely related to each other personally, but instead exchanged greetings with "name thorns" and "names" written with greetings. Later, it evolved into a New Year card and was widely adopted by the people, which is still popular today. Since the Qing Dynasty, the form of "group worship" has been added. In "Yu Tan on the Side Hat", the master of the Qing Dynasty said: "The capital is at the beginning of the year, and it is a routine group worship to unite the friendship of the year and to express the nostalgia." Up to now, group worship is also quite popular among government agencies and social organizations. With the development of the times, the custom of New Year's greetings has been constantly adding new contents and forms. Now, in addition to following the traditional way, people have sprung up New Year's greetings by telephone, text messages and online, which are convenient and practical for contacting feelings and exchanging greetings.

The fifth day of the fifth lunar month is the God of Wealth Day, which is of special significance to merchants. Please invite the God of Wealth in the morning and then open the door. On the seventh and eighth day of the seventh lunar month, there is also the custom of "walking on seven bridges" and "worshiping eight temples", that is, walking on seven bridges on the seventh night and worshiping eight temples on the eighth lunar month, in order to pray for the safety of people and animals and a bumper harvest. During the Spring Festival, folk entertainment activities include dragon and lion dances, lantern races, walking on stilts, pretending to sweep the floor, big-head monk dance, etc., which are very noisy.

Third, the 13th to 18th of the first month is the Lantern Festival.

After the 1th day of the first month, all festival activities are basically decoupled from celebrating the New Year, and then linked with the Lantern Festival, forming a new climax of folk activities in the Spring Festival. Because the fifteenth day of the first month is the earliest full moon in the new year, and the full moon is a beautiful symbol, the fifteenth day of the first month is Shangyuan Festival, and the night of the festival is called Yuanxiao, also known as Lantern Festival. From Han Dynasty to Tang Dynasty, the custom of watching lanterns on Lantern Festival gradually formed, so it is also called "Lantern Festival". The Lantern Festival lasts for 6 days before and after, and the 13th day of the first month is lantern night, so we should cook rice with lantern soup, invite our ancestors to go home and watch the lanterns, and eat glutinous rice soup. On the 14th day of the first month, it is the night of light test. It is the day when farmers burn weeds or hay in the fields, which is called "fire cage", which means that locusts can be driven away. At night, there is a custom of "taking photos of snakes and insects". Children hold paper lanterns and shine them all over the dark places such as behind doors, corners, patios, stoves and cracks in tanks, shouting: "Go, go, go to Maoshan to eat grass seeds!" In the old days, there was a custom for girls to ask Zigu (the girl in the cylinder) for good or ill luck.

The Lantern Festival originated from religious belief, and developed into an entertainment festival. The main features of festival activities are lanterns, lantern viewing, lantern races, lantern festivals and solve riddles on the lanterns, and it is extended to fireworks and social fires. Apart from dragon and lion dances, there are also performances of "lamp-holder plays", and the whole activity highlights the word "noisy". In the old days, there were "drums and loud music".

The festival food of Yuanxiao is dumplings, so dumplings are also called Yuanxiao. The whole Spring Festival activity is not over until the lights go down on the 18th day of the first month. On the night when the lights go down, you should make a soup meal and send the ancestors who watched the lights back. There is also the custom of women "walking three bridges", saying that all diseases can be eliminated throughout the year.

With the passage of time and social progress, some feudal superstitions in the old Spring Festival customs have been gradually abandoned, but some good customs have also faded, so that the older generation of Ningbo people often lament that the taste of the year is less. Spring Festival is a beautiful ideal closely combined with real life, rich in content and colorful, symbolizing auspiciousness and harmony. It is a folk custom that celebrates the whole country and best shows the cohesion of the Chinese nation; The Spring Festival is also the strongest complex in the hearts of Chinese people all over the world. Wherever there are Chinese, there is the Spring Festival. With more and more people's attention, the Spring Festival will definitely get better and better, and the flavor of the year will definitely get stronger and stronger.