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 the Laba Festival is over and the Spring Festival is approaching, every household begins to make preparations, including making new year's cakes, buying new year's goods, removing dust, Xie Nian and cooking soup and rice. During this period,1February 23rd is "the day of offering sacrifices to stoves", and there is a folk proverb that "every year every family is busy, and the king must be on the 23rd." The offerings of Zao Jun are Zao Guo, including red ball, white ball, hemp ball, oil fruit, inch gold candy, foot bone candy, white cross, black cross and so on. , or 8 colors, or 12 colors, it is sweet and sticky in the mouth. After the confession, the statue of "Nine-day East Chef Commanding the Kitchen God" posted for one year was burned together with the paper horse, praying for him to do more good in front of the Jade Emperor and protect the family's peace. "The kitchen god has sealed his mouth and there is no disaster in the four seasons." Family members, mainly children, eat the fruit of the sacrifice stove. "After eating the fruit of the sacrificial furnace, my feet and bones are healthy." To bring Kitchen God home on New Year's Eve is to put the newly bought statue of Kitchen God on the kitchen table. Because the chef has to check the roster before leaving this world, all family members have to go home for the New Year and pray for the health of the chef and the good luck of the whole family. Now 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 it was renamed as "Spring Festival Fruit", it was still sold in the market as a seasonal food. Although there are many kinds of sweets and cakes, grandma will still send a pack of Spring Festival fruits to her underage grandchildren before the "Kitchen Sacrifice Day".

Xie Nian is the biggest family sacrifice in a year, mainly for the "saints of the Southern Dynasties". It is said that after the death of the Song Dynasty, people took this opportunity to express their grief for the emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty and their nostalgia for the motherland, which later became a custom. Xie Nian is held between the kitchen sacrifice and New Year's Eve. After the sacrifice, family, relatives and friends get together to eat.

New Year's Eve is also called 30 years old, and if the moon is small, it is called 20 kuya. In the past, this was the busiest day, and the activities to be completed included:

1. Post red Spring Festival couplets, blessings, door gods, New Year pictures, etc. It not only expressed good wishes, but also rendered a happy atmosphere. It is also necessary to put the gold ingot and Ruyi mascot made of rice cakes into rice jars and rice cabinets, symbolizing "the jar is full and the altar is full".

2. Cut all the dishes 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 household appliances that have been busy for a year can also rest comfortably for a day.

Cook a big bowl of soup in the evening to offer sacrifices to ancestors, and then the whole family will sit around a table and eat "New Year's Eve". The whole fish in the dish should be kept for the New Year, symbolizing "more than one year"; The staple food is juice rice cake soup, which means "the rice cake is getting higher every year". The New Year's Eve dinner is generally simple, and of course it is rich according to the family's economic situation, but there is one thing in common, that is, the whole family gets together to enjoy family happiness and enjoy the deep affection that is not easy to enjoy at ordinary times. In recent years, it is very popular to eat New Year's Eve in hotels. Although it is very labor-saving, I seem to have forgotten all the meanings except "having a meal".

4. After New Year's Eve, the elders distribute the lucky money to the children at home and put it under the pillow before going to bed, indicating that they can "hold it down" ("old" and "precious" are homophonic).

5. New Year's Eve is a special night of "two years old in one night and two years old in class five". When everything is ready, we will close the door, close the door and keep the light on. Some Buddhist women go to the temple to sit and watch at night. Some poor families with more debts also went to the "debt-hiding 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 dared not follow up to collect debts for fear of offending the public. Nowadays, the custom of Chinese New Year has evolved into watching CCTV Spring Festival Gala, waiting for the New Year bell to ring at zero, and then setting off fireworks.

Second, officially enter the Spring Festival celebrations from the first day of the first month.

The main sacrificial activities of the Spring Festival are New Year greetings, that is, New Year greetings and New Year celebrations. There are also the customs of setting off fireworks, eating jiaozi, rice cakes and melon seeds, having a feast with relatives and friends, and carrying out holiday entertainment activities. The first day of the first month is the beginning of a year. When people put on new clothes and set off 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 from home, the younger generation pays New Year greetings to their elders in order, and then the peers pay New Year greetings to each other. Neighbors should also smile when they meet 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, not emptying toilets, not washing clothes, not splashing water outside the door, not frying in a pot (because "frying" is homophonic with "noisy"), not breaking bowls and lights, not beating and scolding children, and not asking for a fire (including begging others)

From the second day of junior high school, it is generally to go to relatives first, then to distant relatives, first to local and then to different places. You come and I go, and you pay New Year greetings to each other. As the saying goes, "Say goodbye to the old year." The host should warmly entertain the guests and provide refreshments, such as melon seeds, fruits, lard dumplings and fried rice cakes. And close parties should also entertain and entertain. New Year 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, upper-class literati did not visit relatives and friends who were not closely related in person, but exchanged greetings with "name thorns" and "names" with greetings. Later, it evolved into a New Year card, which was widely adopted by the people and has been popular until today. Since the Qing Dynasty, the form of "group worship" has been added. In the Jade Altar on the Side Hat, the Qing master said: "At the beginning of the year, it was a routine group worship to unite the friendship of that year and express the nostalgia." Today, group worship is also quite popular in government agencies and social organizations. With the development of the times, the custom of New Year greetings is constantly adding new contents and forms. Nowadays, in addition to following the traditional way, people also pay New Year greetings by telephone, text messages and the Internet, which is convenient and practical for contacting feelings and exchanging greetings.

The fifth day is 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 to do business. On the seventh and eighth day of the seventh lunar month, there are also customs of "walking on the seven bridges" and "worshiping the eight temples", that is, walking on the seven bridges on Tanabata and worshiping the eight temples in August, in order to pray for the safety of people and animals and the bumper harvest of crops. During the Spring Festival, folk entertainment activities include dragon and lion dances, lantern festivals, walking on stilts, pretending to sweep the floor, and big-head monk dance dances. Very noisy.

3. The 13th to 18th of the first month is the Lantern Festival.

After the tenth day of the first month, all folk activities were basically decoupled from the Chinese New Year, and then linked to 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 the Han Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, the custom of watching lanterns on the Lantern Festival gradually took shape, so it was also called "Lantern Festival". Six days before and after the Lantern Festival, the 13th day of the first month is the night of Lantern Festival. You should cook with Yuanxiao soup, and invite your ancestors to go home and watch the lights and eat glutinous rice soup. On the fourteenth day of the first month, it is the night of the lamp test. It is a day when farmers burn weeds or hay in the fields. It is called a "fire cage", which means that locusts can be driven away. There is a custom of "snakes and insects taking pictures" at night. Holding paper lanterns, the children shone 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 and seeds!" " In the past, there was a custom that a girl prayed for good luck or bad luck to her son-in-law.

Lantern Festival originated from religious belief and developed into an entertaining festival. The main features of festival activities are lanterns, lantern viewing, lantern festivals, lantern festivals and solve riddles on the lanterns, and they are extended to fireworks and community fires. In addition to dragon and lion dances, there is also a performance of "lighting", and the whole activity highlights the word "noisy". In the old days, there was drum music and people were buzzing.

The festival food of Yuanxiao is jiaozi, so jiaozi is also called Yuanxiao. The whole Spring Festival didn't end until the lights went out on the 18th day of the first month. On the night of lights-out, we should cook a soup rice and send back the ancestors who watched the lights. There is also the custom of women "walking three bridges", saying that all diseases can be eliminated all year round.

With the passage of time and social progress, some feudal superstitions in the old Spring Festival customs have gradually been abandoned, but some good customs have gradually 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, with rich and colorful contents, symbolizing auspiciousness and harmony. It is a folk custom celebrated by the whole country and can best show the cohesion of the Chinese nation; Spring Festival is also the strongest complex in the hearts of Chinese people all over the world. Where there are people from China, there is the Spring Festival. With more and more people's attention, the Spring Festival will get better and better, and the flavor of the year will get stronger and stronger.