What customs or traditions are there on New Year’s Day?

1. New Year greetings

On the first day of the Lunar New Year, as the most direct form of expressing New Year blessings, New Year greetings are an important custom for Chinese people to celebrate the Spring Festival and have important moral and cultural connotations.

With the changes in society and the advancement of science and technology, people's mood of greeting each other remains unchanged, but the way of greeting them is constantly changing: from visiting the door to greet the New Year, sending greetings by letters and postcards, to expressing affection by making phone calls and text messages. , and now "micro New Year greetings" such as WeChat have emerged, and blessings such as "Happy New Year", "All the best", "Successful career" and "Good health" are everywhere online and offline.

Some people lamented that there are no more face-to-face New Year greetings on the streets, and there is no sincere expression of blessings on the phone. The one-click New Year greetings such as text messages, QQ, and WeChat without leaving home have "diminished the meaning of New Year greetings." Taste" "is getting further and further away from traditional folk customs."

In fact, if you think about it carefully, what people are "disgusted" about is not the change in form itself, but more about "whether the blessings sent by the other party are customized for them" and "whether the content of the text messages and WeChat messages are customized for them". Sincerely."

In the 2014 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, the song "I Don't Reply to Mass Text Messages" sang about the embarrassment of group text messages to greet the New Year, and also expressed the aspirations of many people. People feel "insincere" and "lack of attention and respect for themselves."

So, it is not the change in the form of New Year greetings that isolates the feelings between people, but how to make good use of this form to express sincere feelings. Many netizens said that they had previously sent exclusive blessings to each of their relatives and friends, or designed a personalized multimedia New Year greeting video, and the feedback they received was still warm.

Even because many friends are thousands of miles apart, WeChat text, voice, video and other greetings and blessings are more mutually acceptable, breaking the boundaries of time and space, "making people feel like they are back together." .

As a kind of culture, New Year customs are constantly changing in the process of inheritance. There is no need to criticize the changes in the form of New Year greetings made by modern technology that have "ruined" the flavor of traditional New Year greetings, because if possible, you can walk around the streets to bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new year, and you might as well be more attentive when sending New Year greetings through text messages and WeChat, that is, It can naturally bring people closer together.

As we bid farewell to the passing years and look forward to the future life, it should be said that no matter how the way of greeting New Year changes, as long as the sincerity is there, the friendship will be there and the flavor of the New Year will be there.

2. Spring Festival Couplets

Writing and pasting Spring Festival couplets during the New Year probably best displays the cultural meaning of the Spring Festival. In the past, to make Spring Festival couplets, you first needed to have good calligraphy and some skills in calligraphy. Even if you couldn't write, as long as you walked to the market, the streets, or looked around the neighbors, there would always be ghostwriters. Not only ghostwriters, but also ghostwriters. They also represent ideas. Although there are many similar ones, they are somewhat related to the situation of my own family.

Spring couplets are a type of couplets, and couplets, commonly known as "couples", are concise and concise, with neat contrasts and coordinated levels, expressing the unique meaning of the Chinese language. The difference between Spring Festival couplets and other couplets is that the content of Spring Festival couplets must contain the meaning of bidding farewell to the old year, welcoming the new year, and blessing for the coming year.

Of course, more than 30 years ago, the Spring Festival couplets also had a strong flavor of the times. A pair of Spring Festival couplets can clearly reflect the social trend and political climate at that time. The Spring Festival couplets composed of various eras are like a fresh volume. A living history of political life.

Spring Festival couplets are also a new year's gift that has never declined during the Chinese New Year. No matter what era, Spring Festival couplets are never absent. However, in recent years, most Spring Festival couplets are produced by computers, wholesaled in large quantities, ordered online, and retailed at street stalls or in stores, and their cultural connotation is gradually lost. The Spring Festival is approaching, and before you even think of posting Spring Festival couplets, the property management service has already posted wholesale Spring Festival couplets at the entrances of corridors and elevators.

Every time you open the door of your home, no matter what the situation of your home is, a new couplet has replaced the old one for you. Although it is easy to save trouble and the service is at home, uniformity is the characteristic of these Spring Festival couplets.

There is no statistics on how many of today's Spring Festival couplets are written by oneself, but the idea is no longer laborious. With a click on the Internet, various Spring Festival couplet patterns that suit the occasion come to mind, and the content can be chosen at will.

In fact, today with the increasingly developed Internet and WeChat, it is no longer important whether the Spring Festival couplets need to be posted. As a kind of holiday blessing, the Spring Festival couplets sent to you by many people can be displayed on computers and mobile phones. Just take a look at it. After receiving dozens of copies at once, who has time to write them down on paper?

The Spring Festival comes and goes every year, and the content of the Spring Festival couplets seems to have been exhausted. In the Year of the Rooster, we must "golden roosters announce the dawn". The Year of the Monkey is naturally the "monkey dancing with the golden stick". Those who don’t talk about the twelve zodiac signs are nothing more than longevity, wealth, good luck, and peace, plus good luck, happiness, and a rich family.

Now, looking back at the Spring Festival couplets, what is most needed is cultural skills, writing skills, conception skills, and accumulation of knowledge. All are indispensable. Without these, the Spring Festival couplets are similar to slogans. It doesn't matter if it's not posted.

Extended information:

According to the literal meaning, "Yuan" is called "Shou", and "Dan" is called "Day". When the two words are combined, it can be extended to " The first day of the new year.” Therefore, "New Year's Day" is also called "Three Yuan", that is, the Yuan of the year, the Yuan of the month, and the Yuan of the time. It is now often referred to as "the first day of the first lunar month".

There is a legend about its origin. According to legend, during the ancient times of Yao and Shun, Emperor Yao was diligent and caring for his people. When he grew old, he abdicated his position to Shun, who had both ability and political integrity. Shun in turn abdicated his throne to Yu, who had made great achievements in flood control. They have done many good things and are very loved by the people.

In order to commemorate them, people regarded the day after Yao's death and the day when Shun worshiped the heaven and earth and Yao as the beginning of the year. It was called "New Year's Day" or "Yuanzheng", which became the origin of the ancient New Year's Day. .

The legend is interesting, but the actual origin of New Year's Day is closely related to human life. For example, doing farm work requires some accurate time nodes. The beginning of a year has special meaning, so humans invented the calendar.

The ancients discovered the natural phenomena of the alternation of day and night, the waning and full moon, and the cycle of the four seasons. Finally, the cycle of day and night was regarded as a "day", and the "month" and the grain maturity cycle were determined with reference to the cycle of moon phase changes. It represents the coming of cold and summer, called "year", which is the time it takes for the sun to orbit the earth.

It took a long time to accurately calculate the above-mentioned cycle. The calendar has changed several times, and the time of "New Year's Day" has also changed. The Xia Dynasty used the Xia calendar, with Mengxi month (Yuan month) as the first month; the Yin calendar of the Shang Dynasty, the twelfth month (December) as the first month; and the Zhou calendar of the Zhou Dynasty used the winter month (November) as the first month.

It was not until the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty that there was no further fuss. At that time, Meng Xiyue (the first month of the first lunar month) was designated as the first month, and the first day of Meng Xiyue (the first day of the first lunar month in the lunar calendar) was called New Year's Day. From then on, It was followed until the end of the Qing Dynasty.

Folklore expert Chen Lianshan said that in the early years of the Republic of China, the government at that time revised the calendar and wanted to use the entire Gregorian calendar as a time system and move all traditional festivals to Gregorian calendar time, so January 1 of the Gregorian calendar was named It was called "New Year's Day", and the traditional New Year's Day was renamed "Spring Festival".

People's Daily Online - The party newspaper takes stock of the traditional customs of the Spring Festival: This is how we spend the Spring Festival today

People's Daily - Fun talk about "New Year's Day": I can't tell the difference between the Spring Festival and the Gregorian year