The legend of the spring festival
The original meaning of the concepts of Spring Festival and Year comes from agriculture. In ancient times, people called the growth cycle of the valley "Year", and Shuo Wen He Bu: "Year, the valley is ripe". In the Xia and Shang Dynasties, the Xia calendar came into being, with the moon’s full and short period as the month, and a year divided into twelve months. Every month, the day when the moon is not seen is the new moon, and the first day of the first month is called the beginning of the year, which is also called the year. The name of the year began in the Zhou Dynasty, and it was officially fixed in the Western Han Dynasty and continued until today. However, in ancient times, the first day of the first month was called "New Year’s Day". Until the victory of the Revolution of 1911 in modern China, in order to conform to the farming season and facilitate statistics, the Nanjing Provisional Government stipulated that the summer calendar should be used among the people, and the Gregorian calendar should be implemented in government agencies, factories, mines, schools and organizations, with the first day of January of the Gregorian calendar as New Year’s Day and the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar as the Spring Festival.
On September 27, 1949, New China was founded. At the first plenary session of the China People’s Political Consultative Conference, the Gregorian calendar era was adopted, and the first day of January of the Gregorian calendar was designated as New Year’s Day, commonly known as the Gregorian calendar year. The first day of the first lunar month is usually around beginning of spring, so the first day of the first lunar month is designated as the "Spring Festival", commonly known as the lunar year.
In the traditional sense, the Spring Festival refers to the sacrificial rites from La Worship on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month or on the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, with New Year’s Eve and the first day of the first lunar month as the climax. During the Spring Festival, a traditional festival, the Han nationality and most ethnic minorities in our country have to hold various celebration activities. Most of these activities are mainly about offering sacrifices to gods and buddhas, paying homage to ancestors, getting rid of the old and spreading the new, welcoming the new year and praying for a good harvest. The forms of activities are rich and colorful, with strong national characteristics.
One of the legends of the Spring Festival: staying up for the new year.
Keeping the old year is the custom of staying up late to welcome the new year on the last night of the old year. It is also called keeping the old year on New Year’s Eve, and its common name is "endure the new year". Exploring the origin of this custom, there is an interesting story circulating among the people:
In Archaean times, there was a fierce monster scattered in the mountains and forests. People called them Nian. Its appearance is ferocious, its nature is ferocious, and it specializes in eating birds and animals and insects. It changes its taste every day, from kowtowing insects to living people, which makes people talk about "Nian". Later, people gradually mastered the activity law of "Nian", which is to go to places where people live in concentrated communities every 365 days to taste fresh food, and the haunting time is after dark, and when the cock crows at dawn, they return to the mountains.
Having determined the date when the Year of the Year raged, the people regarded this terrible night as a gateway, which was called the Year of the Year, and came up with a whole set of ways to close the New Year’s Day: every household cooked dinner in advance on this night, turned off the fire and cleaned the stove, then tied up all the cowpens, sealed the front and rear doors of the house, and hid in the house to eat the "New Year’s Eve", because this dinner was uncertain. In addition to asking the whole family to dine together to show harmony and reunion, it is also necessary to offer sacrifices to ancestors before eating, pray for the blessing of ancestors, and spend the night safely. After dinner, no one dares to sleep and sit together to chat and be courageous. It gradually formed the habit of staying up on New Year’s Eve.
The custom of observing the age rose in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and many scholars in the Liang Dynasty had poems about observing the age. "One night is even two years old, and the five hours are divided into two years." People light candles or oil lamps and keep vigil all night, symbolizing driving away all evil diseases and looking forward to good luck in the new year. This custom has been passed down from generation to generation.
Legend 2 of the Spring Festival: the theory of creating a calendar in ten thousand years
According to legend, in ancient times, there was a young man named Wan Nian, who saw that the festivals were chaotic at that time and had a plan to set them accurately. But he couldn’t find a way to calculate the time. One day, he was tired of chopping wood on the mountain and sat in the shade of a tree. The movement of the shadow inspired him. He designed a sundial to measure the time of the day. Later, the dripping spring on the cliff inspired him, and he began to make a five-layer leaky pot to calculate the time. Over time, he found that every three hundred and sixty days, the four seasons would cycle once, and the length of the weather would be repeated.
At that time, the monarch was called Zu Yi, and he was often troubled by the unpredictable weather. After ten thousand years of knowing it, he took the sundial and the clepsydra to see the emperor and explained to Zu Yi the truth of the movement of the sun and the moon. After hearing this, Zu Yi was very happy and felt reasonable. So I left Wannian, built the Sun Moon Pavilion in front of the Temple of Heaven, and built a sundial platform and a leaky pot pavilion. I hope that I can accurately measure the laws of the sun and the moon, calculate the exact time of the morning and evening, and create a calendar to benefit the people of the world.
On one occasion, Zu Yi went to learn about the progress of the calendar for ten thousand years. When he boarded the Sun Moon altar, he saw a poem engraved on the stone wall beside the Temple of Heaven:
Sunrise and sunset are 360, and it starts all over again.
The vegetation is divided into four seasons, and there are twelve circles in a year.
Knowing that the calendar has been created in ten thousand years, I personally boarded the Sun Moon Pavilion to visit ten thousand years. Wannian pointed to the astronomical phenomena and said to Zu Yi, "Now it is twelve months old, the old year is over, and the new year begins again. Please make a festival for the monarch." Zu Yi said, "Spring is the first year of the year, so let’s call it Spring Festival". It is said that this is the origin of the Spring Festival.
Winter went to spring, year after year, and after years of long-term observation and careful calculation, he worked out an accurate solar calendar. When he presented the solar calendar to his successor, he was covered with silver whiskers. The monarch was deeply moved. In order to commemorate the achievements of ten thousand years, he named the solar calendar "perpetual calendar" and named it the birthday star of the sun, moon and moon. In the future, people hang up Shou Xingtu during the Chinese New Year, which is said to commemorate the venerable ten thousand years.
The third legend of the Spring Festival: Sticking Spring Festival couplets and door gods
It is said that the custom of pasting Spring Festival couplets began about 1000 years ago in the post-Shu period, which is proved by history. In addition, according to the Jade Candle Collection, Yanjing’s Chronicle of Years Old and other works, the original form of Spring Festival couplets is what people call "Taofu".
In the ancient mythology of China, it is said that there is a ghost world, in which there is a mountain, a big peach tree covering 3,000 miles, and a golden rooster at the top of the tree. Whenever the golden rooster crows in the morning, ghosts who wander at night will rush back to the ghost domain. The gate of Ghost Domain is located in the northeast of peach tree. There are two gods standing by the door, named shentu and Yu Lei. If the ghost does something unnatural at night, shentu and Yu Lei will immediately find it and catch it, tie it up with a rope made of awn reed and send it to the tiger. So all the ghosts in the world are afraid of shentu and Yu Lei. So the people carved them into peach wood and put them at their doorsteps to ward off evil spirits and prevent harm. Later, people simply carved the names of shentu and Yu Lei on the mahogany board, thinking that doing so could also eliminate evil. This kind of mahogany board was later called "Taofu".
In the Song Dynasty, people began to write couplets on the mahogany board, one of which did not lose the meaning of killing evil spirits, the other expressed their good wishes, and the third decorated the portal for beauty. They also write couplets on red paper symbolizing happiness and good luck, and stick them on both sides of doors and windows during the Spring Festival to express people’s good wishes for good luck in the coming year.
In order to pray for the longevity of the family, people in some places still keep the habit of sticking to the door. It is said that two door gods are pasted on the gate, and all monsters will be afraid. In the folk, the door god is a symbol of righteousness and force. The ancients believed that people with strange looks often had magical temperament and extraordinary skills. They are honest and kind-hearted, and it is their nature and responsibility to catch ghosts and capture demons. Zhong Kui, the ghost hunter admired by people, is such a strange look. Therefore, the folk door gods are always glaring and ugly, with all kinds of traditional weapons in their hands, ready to fight against ghosts who dare to come to the door. Because the doors of Chinese houses are usually two opposite, the door gods are always in pairs.
After the Tang Dynasty, in addition to shentu and Yu Lei, people regarded Qin Shubao and Weichi Gong, two military commanders in the Tang Dynasty, as gatekeepers. According to legend, Emperor Taizong was ill, and when he heard the ghosts calling outside, he was restless all night. So he asked the two generals to stand by the door with weapons, and there was no ghost harassment the next night. Later, Emperor Taizong had the images of these two generals painted and pasted on the door, and this custom began to spread widely among the people.