Can you tell me what are the customs and habits of various places during the Laba Festival?

Laba Festival, commonly known as "Laba Festival", is the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. The ancients had the tradition of offering sacrifices to ancestors and gods and praying for a good harvest. In some areas, there is the custom of drinking Laba porridge. Our country has had the tradition of celebrating the Laba Festival since ancient times. On this day, most people cook Laba porridge, and in the northern region, they also make Laba garlic. Let’s take a look at the customs of the Laba Festival!

1. Customs of the Northern and Southern Laba Festival

Northern China

1. Shaanxi Customs

After the Laba porridge is cooked, you must first Worship gods and ancestors. If you want to give it to relatives and friends later, you must send it out before noon. Finally, the whole family eats it.

The leftover Laba porridge, if you keep it for a few days and have it left over, is a good sign, which means "more than enough every year". If you give porridge to poor people, it will be a good thing for yourself.

In some places where there is little or no rice production, people do not eat Laba porridge, but eat Laba noodles. Use various fruits and vegetables to make sautee, and roll out the noodles. On the morning of the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, the whole family eats together.

?2. Northwest customs

During the Laba Festival in the northern Shaanxi Plateau, in addition to using a variety of rice and beans to make porridge, various dried fruits, tofu and meat must be added to cook the porridge. become. After eating, the porridge should be smeared on the door, the stove and the trees outside the door to ward off evil spirits and avoid disasters and welcome a bumper agricultural harvest in the coming year. Moreover, it is forbidden to eat vegetables on Laba day. If you eat vegetables on this day, there will be many weeds in the crop fields. On Laba Day, in addition to eating Laba porridge, people also use the porridge to worship ancestors and granaries.

3. Beijing customs

Beijing’s Laba porridge can be said to be the most exquisite. There are many things mixed with white rice, such as red dates, lotus seeds, walnuts, chestnuts, almonds, pine nuts, longan, grapes, ginkgo, black hair, roses, red beans, peanuts... no less than 20 kinds.

On the night of the seventh day of the twelfth lunar month, people began to wash the rice, soak the fruits, remove the skins, and remove the cores. They started simmering the rice over low heat at midnight. It was not until the next morning that the Laba porridge was ready.

South:

1. Guangdong customs

In Guangdong, the atmosphere of the Laba Festival is very light. Why do Cantonese people not celebrate the Laba Festival? This is related to the geographical location and the living habits of Guangfu people since ancient times.

The ancient Lingnan water towns were not yet developed. The life of the indigenous people was not based on farming. They all made a living by fishing for shrimps and fish in the water. However, no one cultivated the beans and cereals needed to make Laba porridge at all, so There is no custom of eating these things.

People in Guangdong also eat Laba porridge, but mainly in the Pearl River Delta area. It is a custom brought by the Hakka people from the north. However, the materials used to make Laba porridge are different. For example, millet and red dates are mostly used in the north, while In the south, glutinous rice, lily, lotus seeds, etc. are mostly used.

2. Fujian customs

Fuzhou’s traditional Laba porridge has an interesting feature: a small lion made of several fruits is placed on the porridge to ward off evil spirits. In the past, Fuzhou people usually started making Laba porridge on the night of the seventh day of the twelfth lunar month, simmering it carefully overnight, and the next morning, the Laba porridge was ready.

Some people will first carve the fruit into various shapes, the most interesting one is to make a "fruit lion". The crispy dates are pitted and dried to make the lion's body, half a walnut kernel is used to make the lion's head, the peach kernel is used to make the lion's feet, and the almonds are used to make the lion's tail. Then use syrup to stick the various parts together and put them on the porridge surface.

If the bowl of noodles is large, you can also put two lions on it, which means "avoiding evil and bringing good luck". In large temples, you can also see colored foods such as jujube paste, bean paste, and hawthorn molded into small shapes such as the Eight Immortals, Arhat, and Longevity God.

After the Laba porridge is cooked, worship the gods and ancestors in the early morning, then give it to relatives, friends and neighbors, and deliver it before noon. Finally, the whole family shares the food, leaving a little bit to take the sign of "more than enough every year". In the cold winter, drinking a bowl of steaming, sweet and delicious Laba porridge can dispel the cold and warm the stomach, which is also beneficial to human health.

?3. Jiangxi Customs

The Laba Festival is the first festival before the Spring Festival. Nanchang people regard "Laba Festival" as the prelude to the New Year. Starting from Laba Festival, every household must prepare peanuts, melon seeds, bacon, and buy new year's goods. There is a folk saying that "after eating Laba porridge, you will look forward to the new year."

“You don’t have to choose the day of Laba, as it will bring good fortune and longevity.” In Nanchang, Laba is also a traditional auspicious day of the zodiac. On this day, in addition to drinking "Laba porridge", Nanchang people also often hold "Laba weddings" such as getting engaged, marrying a daughter-in-law, and marrying off a daughter.

In ancient times, in addition to worshiping gods and ancestors, the customs of December were also "Nuo". Nuo is a unique culture in Jiangxi and is a ritual to expel plague ghosts.

In Nanchang, in order to inherit and develop Nuo culture, Honggutan New District has invested in the construction of Nuo Culture Park. According to historical records, performers usually wear masks and pretend to be kings, warriors, or squares, hold swords and axes, and people beat drums and make noise to drive away evil spirits and diseases. This is also called wax drums to drive away diseases. It is said that it can keep children safe. healthy.

Later, the form changed among the people and became eating fried beans, fried wheat, etc. Regardless of beans or wheat, they should be fried and stir-fried, and then let the children eat some, which is called "biting ghosts".

2. Traditional food customs of Laba Festival

? 1. Drink Laba porridge

On Laba day, there is a custom of eating Laba porridge. Laba porridge is also called Qibao and five-flavor porridge. The history of eating Laba porridge in our country has been more than a thousand years. It first started in the Song Dynasty. On every Laba day, no matter the court, government, monasteries or ordinary people's homes, they must make Laba porridge. In the Qing Dynasty, the custom of drinking Laba porridge became even more popular. In the palace, the emperor, empress, prince, etc. would give Laba porridge to the ministers of civil and military affairs and the attendant maids, and distribute rice, fruits, etc. to various temples for the monks to eat.

In the folk, every household also makes Laba porridge to worship ancestors; at the same time, families gather together to eat it and give it to relatives and friends. Although the ingredients of Laba porridge vary in different regions, they basically include rice, millet, glutinous rice, sorghum rice, purple rice, barley and other cereals; beans such as soybeans, red beans, mung beans, kidney beans, cowpeas, red dates, peanuts, lotus seeds, Dried fruits such as wolfberry, chestnut, walnut kernel, almond, longan, raisin, and ginkgo. Laba porridge is not only a seasonal delicacy, but also a good health food, especially suitable for maintaining the spleen and stomach in cold weather.

?2. Laba wine and Laba garlic

On Laba day, people in old Beijing would make Laba wine and Laba garlic. To make Laba wine, purple-skinned garlic cloves are soaked in rice wine or sorghum wine, sealed and opened for drinking during the Spring Festival. Laba wine is fragrant, can also open blood vessels and warm the stomach.

Laba garlic, also known as Laba vinegar, is a traditional snack mainly popular in the north, especially in North China. The method is extremely simple, just soak the purple garlic cloves in a ceramic jar, fill it with rice vinegar and seal it, and eat it with dumplings and cold dishes on New Year's Eve and Spring Festival. This kind of acetic acid is spicy, and the soaked garlic is green in color, like jadeite. It is particularly beautiful and crispy in the mouth.

There is another saying about the old Beijing custom of soaking garlic in vinegar or wine, which starts from the homophony of "garlic" and "suan". In the old days of Beijing, various shops had the custom of settling accounts in the twelfth lunar month of the previous year, that is, they had to settle the income and expenditure for the year and check their foreign debts and receivables. At that time, calculations were usually done on the day of Laba. As the saying goes, "After eating Laba rice, you will do your annual affairs." Therefore, the Laba Festival is also called "Laba calculation". Starting from Laba Day, shop assistants or moneylenders often bring a small jar of garlic soaked in Laba to give to debtors when they go to collect debts. The debtors will know at a glance that they are coming to collect debts. When poor people or small businessmen who borrowed debts were unable to repay their debts, they would go out to hide from debts on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, the eighteenth day of the twelfth lunar month, and the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. Therefore, in order to avoid being "settled" by people who want to settle accounts and collect debts during the Laba Festival, the common people make "Laba Garlic" or "Laba Wine", eat them and drink them to get rid of bad luck, and happily have a safe and auspicious year. .

After Laba, it’s New Year! The sweet and glutinous taste of Laba porridge is probably the flavor of the New Year in every Chinese’s heart and an unforgettable memory. After drinking a bowl of Laba porridge, New Year is approaching