The Spring Festival is a day to get rid of the old and make a new one. Although the New Year's Day is scheduled on the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar, the activities of the New Year's Day are not limited to the first day of the first month of the first month. From the 23rd (or 24th) of the twelfth lunar month, people have started the "busy year": cleaning houses, washing hair and bathing, preparing utensils for the festival, etc.
All these activities have a common theme, that is, "saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new". People welcome the new year and spring with grand ceremony and enthusiasm.
The Spring Festival is also a day for offering blessings and prayers for the New Year. The ancients said that once the millet is ripe, it is a "year", and the harvest of the five grains is "a great year". In the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, there was an annual event to celebrate the harvest. Later, offering sacrifices to heaven and praying for the new year became one of the main contents of the New Year custom. Moreover, the gods of the road, such as the kitchen god, the door god, the wealth god, the joy god, the well god, etc., all enjoy the incense of the world during the festival.
People take this to reward the gods for their past care and to pray for more blessings in the new year. The New Year is also a day for family reunion and ancestor worship. On New Year's Eve, the whole family gathers together happily and eats the "reunion dinner". On the New Year's Day, firecrackers rang out in unison, and the activities of bidding farewell to the old year and welcoming the new year reached a climax. Each family burns incense to pay homage, worships heaven and earth, sacrifices ancestors, and then pays New Year's greetings to the elders in turn, and then congratulates relatives and friends of the same clan. After New Year's Day, they began to visit relatives and friends and exchange gifts to celebrate the New Year.
Spring Festival is a festival for people to entertain and carnival. After the first day, a variety of colorful entertainment activities are carried out: lion dancing, dragon lantern dance, yangko twisting, stilt walking, juggling various operas, etc., adding a strong festive atmosphere to the Chinese New Year. At this time, just before and after the "Start of Spring", in ancient times, a grand ceremony was held to welcome the spring. Various social fire activities reached the climax again on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month.
Therefore, the festival, which integrates prayer, celebration and entertainment, has become the most solemn festival of the Chinese nation. Today, except for activities such as worshiping gods and ancestors, which have been weakened compared with the past, the main customs of the festival have been inherited and developed intact.
