The Spring Festival is coming, which means that spring is coming, everything is renewed, vegetation is renewed, and a new round of sowing and harvesting season is about to begin. People have just spent the long winter when flowers and trees are dying in the ice and snow, and have long been looking forward to the day when spring blooms. When the new year comes, it is natural to greet this festival with joy and singing.
For thousands of years, people have made the annual custom celebration extremely colorful. Every year from the 23rd to 30th of the twelfth lunar month, people call this period "Spring Festival" or "Dust Day", which is the traditional habit of our people.
Then, every household prepares new year's goods. About ten days before the festival, people were busy shopping. New year's goods include chicken, duck, fish, tea, wine, oil sauce, North and South roasted seeds and nuts, and fruit with sugar bait. They should also prepare some gifts when visiting relatives and friends in the New Year. Children should buy new clothes and hats to wear in the New Year.
Before the Chinese New Year, a New Year greeting in red paper and yellow characters should be posted on the door of the house, that is, Spring Festival couplets written in red paper. Bright-colored and auspicious New Year pictures are posted in the house. Beautiful window grilles are cut out by ingenious girls and pasted on the windows. Red lanterns are hung in front of the door, and lucky characters and door gods can be pasted upside down. Passers-by are blessed when they think of it. All these activities are aimed at adding enough festive atmosphere to the festival.
Another name for the Spring Festival is China New Year. In the past legend, "Nian" is a fictional animal, which will bring bad luck to people. New Year's Eve. When the tree is dead, the grass will not grow; After the New Year, everything grows and flowers are everywhere. How to spend a year? Firecrackers are needed, so there is the custom of setting off firecrackers, which is actually another way to set off a lively scene.
The Spring Festival is a happy and peaceful festival, and it is also a day for family reunion. Children who leave home should go home for reunion during the Spring Festival. The night before the Lunar New Year is the 30th night of the twelfth lunar month, also called New Year's Eve and Reunion Night. When the old and the new turn, celebrating the New Year is one of the most important activities. According to leisure, "home yellow kite moxibustion?" Poison? What is the word silkworm? Zheng? Fall? Hey? τ harmony is getting stronger and stronger, holding the South Eight Wishes? What about those rabbits? Do you want to summon the flock? What is the shrimp doing? Hey? Rank? Again? What about the drama? What do you think of badger? What's wrong with this car? What is the mess? Hey hey? Talk about reef breaking?
When the first cock crow rings, or the New Year bell rings, firecrackers are ringing in the street, and noise comes and goes. Everyone is beaming. The new year has begun. Men, women and children wear holiday clothes. First of all, pay New Year greetings to the elders at home. During the festival, children will also get lucky money and have a reunion dinner. On the second and third days of the following year, they began to visit relatives and friends, pay New Year greetings to each other and congratulate them on their new happiness and wealth.
The warm atmosphere of the festival permeates not only every household, but also the streets and alleys all over the country. In some places, there are customs such as lion dancing, playing dragon lanterns, performing social fires, visiting flower markets and temple fairs. During this period, lanterns are all over the city and tourists are all over the streets. It was very lively and unprecedented, and the Spring Festival didn't really end until after the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month.
The Spring Festival is the most important festival of the Han nationality, but more than a dozen ethnic minorities, such as Manchu, Mongolian, Yao, Zhuang, Bai, Gaoshan, Hezhe, Hani, Daur, Dong and Li, have also had the custom of the Spring Festival, but the form of the festival has its own national characteristics and is more meaningful.
The Spring Festival is an important carrier for China people to release their emotions and meet their psychological needs. It is also the annual carnival of the Chinese nation.
Song Qi, a poet in the Song Dynasty, famously said, "The branches of red apricots are noisy in spring", which was praised as "noisy" by Wang Guowei, a master of Chinese studies, and made the realm come out completely. It is also very appropriate to use the word "lively" to describe the artistic conception of spring and the joy of welcoming spring in China people's minds. Winter goes and spring comes, everything recovers, rivers are frozen, vegetation is jointing, insects are singing and birds are singing. Everything wakes up from the silence of hibernation, showing a happy vitality and showing the noise and excitement of life. In a sense, we can regard setting off firecrackers as an imitation and expectation of spring thunder, a preview of a hundred flowers and a call for a beautiful spring. Fear of cold, silence and excitement are a major feature of China people's personality, which is the externalization of the collective subconscious of the Chinese nation. This subconscious has two connotations: first, the depressed emotions in secular labor years can be completely released; Second, people need opportunities to make full use of their vitality. During the Spring Festival, the most lively events are temple fairs, new year's goods markets, social fire performances and the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month. Firecrackers, hawking, playing music, gongs and drums come and go. People have swept away the tiredness of daily life and the seriousness of being elders and parents, all of them are smiling, refreshed and enjoying themselves, and even take part in social fire, yangko and opera performances, showing their talents in front of many villagers, which is somewhat "degenerate" and shows the taste of "true self". The Spring Festival celebrated all over the world is indeed beyond ordinary daily life, the birthday of the Chinese nation and the most oriental carnival.
Here, we can't help but talk about the topic of banning firecrackers during the Spring Festival. Firecrackers are called "firecrackers" because they evolved from the belief and custom that ancient people lit bamboo poles in the fire and made crackling explosions to drive out the evil spirits of mandrill. Later, it gradually evolved into an important cultural carrier for China people to express their feelings in festivals and various celebrations. According to relevant historical documents, in the Northern Song Dynasty, people used paper roll firecrackers to create a happy atmosphere. However, in recent years, the Millennium-old Chinese New Year custom of "no firecrackers at the age of one" has been questioned and opposed by some people, and even local legislation prohibits firecrackers. It is said that this is an effort to modernize and internationalize China. As early as 1985, Beijing proposed to let the people of China "have a civilized and peaceful Spring Festival", which is obviously an unreasonable and wrong slogan! What makes you say shooting is "uncivilized"? The festival will be full of passion. Why do you ask people in your own country to keep "peace" during festivals? Thirteen years after 1993 Beijing people legislated to ban firecrackers, amid people's complaints and protests, Beijing city was forced to amend the ban order from "ban" to "limit", making embarrassing concessions to public opinion and traditional customs. By the end of 2006, among the 282 cities previously banned in China, 177 cities have fully released fireworks and firecrackers. Of the 3 1 provincial capital cities, 8 have been completely liberalized, 18 have conditionally restricted emissions, and only 5 are still insisting on the ban. But I believe that these five "stubborn fortresses" will be "knocked down" by firecrackers in the Spring Festival next year. In some local governments, there are often strange phenomena of doing bad things with good intentions and following the trend of legislation, without drawing lessons from history. As early as 1903, local authorities in Tianjin and Shanghai followed suit and banned fireworks in concession areas. The result is difficult to implement, and it will go away. Singapore banned broadcasting for 34 years and lifted the ban in 2004. The reasons are still "public opinion cannot be violated" and "respect for traditional customs". More ironically, new york, San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, Amsterdam, Berlin, Germany and other international cities have made special laws to allow fireworks and firecrackers to be set off during the Spring Festival and festive activities in order to meet the needs of Chinese communities. However, it is in the "hometown" of fireworks and firecrackers (China produces 75% of the world's total output) that they were banned for some time. Isn't that weird? As the spokesman of the State Council said when explaining the Regulations on the Safety Management of Fireworks and Firecrackers, the key is to strengthen safety supervision and management from the aspects of production, quality, transportation, sales and public safety, rather than banning them. Without firecrackers, the joy of China people will be suppressed, the Spring Festival will not be lively, prosperous and carnival, and traditional festivals will become cold and lifeless. Therefore, being forced to change from "prohibition" to "restriction" is a lesson that should be learned, that is, we must never obliterate tradition by modernization, ban culture by law, replace public opinion with the will of the Chief Executive, and hurt people's feelings by so-called "scientific and reasonable" measures.
The Spring Festival in China has condensed the rich connotation of agricultural civilization for thousands of years, and displayed the attractive charm and unique value of oriental folk culture, which is a wonderful flower in multi-world culture. There are indications that it is just around the corner for China Spring Festival to evolve into an international festival with oriental cultural characteristics. As Zhang Yiwu, a famous scholar and professor of Peking University, said, "The Spring Festival is actually becoming a worldwide festival, because it has the following conditions. First of all, China people widely publicize the Spring Festival all over the world. For example, lion and dragon dances have established the most intuitive concept of the Spring Festival among other ethnic groups. Second, the rapid growth of China's economic and cultural strength has created a China with extraordinary attraction, which is the most fundamental reason why the Spring Festival has become a worldwide festival. At the same time, with the improvement of China's international status, Chinese is not only a domestic political issue of the host country, but also an increasingly important issue of relations with China. Third, globalization has made the world more diverse. While China people gradually accept Western Christmas and Thanksgiving, the world's attitude towards China culture is becoming more and more open. Fourth, the Spring Festival is close to New Year's Day, which has natural advantages as a festival. Especially for the northern hemisphere, this festival can be used as a continuation of the New Year's Day holiday in the long winter. " We must change the abnormal tendency of spending a lot of money to artificially "make festivals". It mainly protects the traditional festivals of all ethnic groups in various regions, highlights their cultural connotations and traditional characteristics, and becomes a "gold mine" to attract foreign tourists. We should also make citizens all over the world have health awareness. "Anything foreign will oppose us" is the way of thinking of the Boxer Rebellion and the expression of narrow nationalism, which should not be the mentality of China people today. Being a master in your own country and respecting traditional customs is self-confidence and self-love; Being a guest abroad and respecting other people's customs are civilized and educated. As long as we all practice these two aspects, we will certainly be able to raise the cultural consciousness of "beauty, beauty, beauty and world harmony" emphasized by Mr. Fei Xiaotong to a new level and become a true patriot and a qualified world citizen!