The Origin of Spring Festival and Lantern Festival

The Spring Festival is the beginning of the lunar calendar and an ancient traditional festival in China. In ancient times, Nian was not celebrated on the 29th or 30th day of the twelfth lunar month, but on wax day, which later became Laba. After the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the "wax sacrifice" moved to the end of the year. In the Republic of China, the Lunar New Year was called "Spring Festival" only when the solar calendar was changed, because the Spring Festival was usually around beginning of spring.

The Spring Festival is the largest and most lively ancient traditional festival in China. Commonly known as "Chinese New Year". According to the China lunar calendar, the first day of the first month is called Yuanri, Chen Yuan, Jacky, Yuanshuo and New Year's Day. Commonly known as the first day of the first month, there are other nicknames such as Shangri-La, Zheng Chao, Sanshuo, Shisan and Sanyuan, which means that the first day of the first month is the beginning of the year, month and day.

The Spring Festival, as its name implies, is the Spring Festival. Spring has come, Vientiane is renewed, and a new round of sowing and harvesting season is about to begin again. People have enough reasons to welcome this festival by singing and dancing. So, before the festival, a New Year message with red paper and yellow characters was posted on the frontispiece. When Miss Chun comes to the door, she will read out words to express her best wishes for the New Year. With this idea, good luck really came. The same moral things are hanging red lanterns, sticking the word "Fu" and sticking the statue of the God of Wealth. The word "Fu" must be posted backwards, and passers-by will say "Fu has fallen", which means "Fu has arrived".

Another name for the Spring Festival is China New Year. What is "year"? It is a fictional animal, which will bring bad luck to people. The year is coming. When the tree is dead, the grass will not grow; A year has passed, everything grows and flowers are everywhere. How to spend the year? Firecrackers are needed, so there is a custom of setting off firecrackers. 1993, the Beijing Municipal People's Government promulgated a law prohibiting the setting off of fireworks and firecrackers, making this centuries-old custom a thing of the past.

The Spring Festival is a family reunion festival, which is very similar to Christmas in the West. Children who leave home will have to travel thousands of miles back to their parents' home at this time. The night before the real Chinese New Year is called "New Year's Eve", which is also called "reunion night" and "reunion dinner". On the night of reunion, every family gets together to talk about the old and the new, and congratulate and encourage each other. There is a custom of eating jiaozi in northern China at this time. Jiaozi's practice is to mix dough first, and the word "harmony" means "harmony"; Jiaozi's jiaozi is homophonic with Jiao, and "Harmony" and "Jiao" have the meaning of gathering together, which also means "Jiaozi is young". So we use jiaozi as a symbol of reunion. There is a habit of eating rice cakes in the south, which symbolizes a better life. Putting up Spring Festival couplets, beating gongs and drums, saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new are very lively.

Traditional celebrations last from New Year's Eve to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month. The festive atmosphere will last for a month. Before the first day of the first month, there were sacrifices to stoves, ancestors and filth. On the 30th, we will put up a door-keeper, put up couplets, hang flags, eat jiaozi, set off firecrackers and "keep watch" on New Year's Eve. On the first day of the first month, the younger generation pays New Year greetings to their elders, and then visits relatives and friends. When relatives and friends meet for the first time, they say "Congratulations on getting rich", "Congratulations on getting rich" and "Happy New Year" to each other to express their congratulations. The new son-in-law will go to her parents' home to pay New Year's greetings, usually on the third day of New Year's Eve. Since the old man turned 60, banquets have been held during the Spring Festival every ten years. Besides exchanging New Year greetings, there are also customs such as giving children lucky money, dancing lions, playing dragon lanterns, performing social fires, visiting flower markets and enjoying lantern festivals. During this period, lanterns filled the city and tourists crowded the streets, which was unprecedented ... The Spring Festival didn't end until after the Lantern Festival (the fifteenth day of the first month).

On February 23rd, 1949, 1949, the people of China * * and the Central People's Government of China stipulated that the Spring Festival would be closed for three days every year. The Spring Festival is the biggest and most lively ancient traditional festival in China.

On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, just after the Spring Festival, the traditional festival Lantern Festival in China was ushered in.

The first month is the first month of the lunar calendar. The ancients called the night "Xiao", so they called the fifteenth day of the first month the Lantern Festival. The fifteenth day of the first month is the night of the first full moon in a year and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty. On the night of Spring Festival, people celebrate this festival and the continuation of the Spring Festival. Lantern Festival is also called "Shangyuan Festival".

According to the folk tradition in China, on this bright night, people light thousands of lanterns to celebrate. Going out to enjoy the moon, lighting and setting fires, enjoying lantern riddles, eating Yuanxiao, family reunion and celebrating festivals are all enjoyment.

Lantern Festival is also called Lantern Festival. The custom of burning lanterns in the Lantern Festival originated in the Han Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, the lantern viewing activities became more prosperous. Lights are hung everywhere in palaces and streets, and tall light wheels, light buildings and light trees have been built. Lu Zeng, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, described the grand occasion of the Lantern Festival in "Watching Lights at Fifteen Nights", saying that "the stars in the Han Dynasty fell, and the balcony was like a hanging moon."

In the Song Dynasty, more attention was paid to the Lantern Festival, and lantern viewing activities became more lively. The lantern viewing activity lasted for five days, and the styles of lanterns were more abundant. In the Ming Dynasty, the Lantern Festival will last 10 days, which is the longest Lantern Festival in China. Although there were only three days to enjoy the lanterns in the Qing Dynasty, the scale of the lantern viewing activities was unprecedented. Besides burning lanterns, fireworks are also set off for entertainment.

"Lantern riddle", also known as "playing riddles", is an activity added after the Lantern Festival, which appeared in the Song Dynasty. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Lin 'an, the capital, made riddles every Lantern Festival, and there were many people in solve riddles on the lanterns. At the beginning, it was a busybody who wrote riddles on paper and posted them on colorful lanterns for people to guess. Because riddles are enlightening and interesting, they are welcomed by all walks of life in the process of communication.

Folk custom of eating Yuanxiao on Lantern Festival. Yuanxiao is made of glutinous rice, which can be solid or stuffed. Filled with bean paste, sugar, hawthorn, various fruit materials and so on. You can cook, fry, steam and fry when you eat. At first, people called this kind of food "Floating Zi Yuan", and later they called it "Tangtuan" or "Tangyuan". These names are similar in pronunciation, meaning reunion, symbolizing family reunion, harmony and happiness. People also miss their departed relatives and place their best wishes on their future lives.

In some places, the Lantern Festival also has the custom of "walking away from all diseases", which is also called "roasting all diseases" and "dispersing all diseases". Most of the participants are women. They walk together or against the wall, or across the bridge in the suburbs, in order to drive away diseases and eliminate disasters.

With the passage of time, there are more and more activities in the Lantern Festival, and many local festivals have added traditional folk performances such as playing dragon lanterns, playing lions, walking on stilts, rowing dry boats, dancing yangko and playing Taiping drums. This traditional festival, which has been passed down for more than two thousand years, is not only popular on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, but also celebrated every year in areas where overseas Chinese live in concentrated communities.

The Origin and Legend of Lantern Festival

Lantern Festival is a traditional festival in China, which began in the Western Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago. Lantern Festival viewing began in the period of Emperor Han Ming in the East. Ming Di advocates Buddhism. He heard that on the fifteenth day of the first month, monks watched the Buddhist relics and lit lanterns to worship the Buddha, so that all the gentry and ordinary people hung lanterns. Later, this Buddhist ceremonial festival gradually formed a grand folk festival. This festival has experienced the development process from the court to the people, and from the Central Plains to the whole country.

Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty ordered the 15th day of the first month to be designated as the Lantern Festival. During the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the sacrificial activities of "Taiyi God" were scheduled for the 15th day of the first month. Taiyi: the God who rules the universe. When Sima Qian created the taichu calendar Law, he had already identified the Lantern Festival as a major festival.

Another way of saying it is that the custom of burning lanterns in Lantern Festival originated from the "ternary theory" of Taoism; The fifteenth day of the first month is Shangyuan Festival, the fifteenth day of July is Zhongyuan Festival, and the fifteenth day of October is Xiayuan Festival. The officials in charge of the upper, middle and lower elements are heaven, earth and man respectively. The celestial officials are happy and the Lantern Festival should be lit.

The festivals and customs of Lantern Festival have been extended and expanded with the development of history. As far as the length of festivals is concerned, there is only one day in Han Dynasty, three days in Tang Dynasty and five days in Song Dynasty. In the Ming Dynasty, lights were lit from the eighth day of August until the seventeenth night of the first month, a total of ten days. Connected with the Spring Festival, it is a city during the day, full of excitement, and brightly lit at night, which is spectacular. Especially the exquisite and colorful lights make it the climax of entertainment activities during the Spring Festival. In the Qing Dynasty, there were more "hundred operas" such as dragon dancing, lion dancing, dry boating, walking on stilts and yangko dancing, but the festival period was shortened to four to five days.