The ritualistic sense of life

My mother was a life-loving person with a religious sense of devotion to rituals. Year after year, from the eight bowls and eight plates of Chinese New Year's Eve rice to the six days of the sixth month of the lunar calendar, she was meticulous in terms of form and content.

In order to Chinese New Year's Eve reunion dinner, my mother began to draw up menus and prepare ingredients more than half a month in advance. Cold cuts, hot stir-fry, braised, soup, all of them are exquisite. The first thing to serve is the cold cut, and when the cold cut is half eaten, the hot stir-fry is on the table, and these two things are appetizers. Braised pork is prepared for rice, and when the wine is almost drunk, the thick flavor of braised pork, braised fish, braised lion's head is the most suitable for rice. My mother was good at making soup with diced yam and diced lean meat. After eating 80% of the time, a bowl of steaming soup is served, and the aroma is fragrant, which is both nourishing and delicious.

When we were packing up, our mother took us and made dumplings and rice balls while guarding the New Year, which were prepared for the morning of the first day of the New Year. The dumplings are crooked, and the harmonic sound of "Wanwanshun" is joined, and the tangyuan represents "reunion and roundness", which is a blessing for a whole year.

Early in the morning of the first day of the New Year, my father took the firecrackers prepared by my mother downstairs to set off, and the new year began with a crackling sound. After the family ate dumplings and lanterns, we wore new clothes made by our mother and were led by our father to pay homage to the elders of the family. The mother stayed at home and prepared cloud cakes, melon seeds, peanuts, and sesame candy to receive guests who came to visit the New Year. This whole set of procedures is like this every year. In our childhood memories, the smiles on the faces of adults during the festival, as well as the full eating and drinking that accompanies the festival, and the mooncakes, rice dumplings, duck eggs, and tangyuan with joy are the greatest hopes in ordinary days.

In addition, our parents gave us birthdays. Birthday cakes were not popular at that time, but a bowl of longevity noodles was always available. When we grew up, we left home like birds and scattered everywhere, but every year before our birthday, we always received letters or phone calls from our parents, asking us to cook a few good dishes and celebrate our birthdays.

After starting a family, the husband said that his family never had a birthday. When his parents got married, they agreed that from then on, the two would no longer celebrate their respective birthdays, but only celebrate their wedding anniversaries. At first I was reluctant and would always arrange to go out to dinner or give him a small gift on his birthday, but I never received a birthday present from him. Asked him why, he said, do not send gifts but the Gu family has you in their hearts, and sending you flowers and gifts is not good for you, which one do you choose? I was stunned, it turned out that in this public place, sending flowers and gifts and gu family can not be combined!

Birthdays are just that, the holidays are still going to pass. In order to give my family an authentic Huaiyang flavor Dragon Boat Festival, I specially bought glutinous rice and rice dumplings from a Chinese supermarket, and used a few tricks I learned from my mother when I returned to China, wrapped a large pot of "Chen's" small foot dumplings, and it took 3 hours to cook alone. Who knew that the family symbolically ate two chopsticks and then put them down. The son said, don't you just wrap the rice in the leaves? The solid tangyuan made during the Lantern Festival also suffered the same fate. Since then, these two festivals that brought me the best memories of my childhood have completely become my "carnival of one person".

Later, it was found that the Yankees in the family did not buy glutinous rice products, but accepted the lotus clips and spring rolls in their entirety. So every Chinese New Year's Eve lunar calendar, I would spend half a day carefully making two large plates and letting them eat enough. He also told his son that this is the "Chinese New Year's Eve dish" of his mother's hometown, and today's meal is our family's "Chinese New Year's Eve meal". After that, every time he ate lotus clips and spring rolls, his son said happily that it was the Spring Festival today.

Living in Western countries, other holidays can be ignored, and Christmas is going to be lived no matter what. When my son was young, I dressed up the Christmas tree with him before the holiday, and on Christmas Eve, I put a few boxes of gifts under the tree after he went to bed, pretending that Santa Claus had sent it. Probably because I was always testing what he wanted, when I was in junior high school, my son finally saw through my disguise: I already knew that you bought those things, and there was no Santa Claus at all. I breathed a sigh of relief, and I didn't even have to do this from now on.

Slowly, the sense of "ritual" that I cultivated in my original family also faded, basically only on my son's birthday, buy a birthday cake, and invite a few children to come to the house to be lively. Sing a birthday song, leave a few photos, that's it.

Since I gave up the obsession of "ritual sense", a family of three under the same roof, each taking what he needs, each according to his own good, relaxed. The turkey that the locals eat at Christmas, I don't roast, and I don't think it's delicious, so my Family Christmas dinner is still a lotus spring roll singing the protagonist. Lock your doors during the more than ten-day Christmas and New Year holidays, or go skiing in the mountains north of Toronto for the thrill of snow sports, or go to the Caribbean Cruise to relax and enjoy Elysium. When I came back, the whole family was like running out of electricity.

Since my son went to college and worked in other places, my husband and I have at least two meals on the weekend that do not have to accommodate each other's "buffet". The stomach was nostalgic, so he found the taste of childhood in his noodles, and I found the taste of childhood in my rice dumplings. But every Friday when I come back from work, my husband has to prepare enough ingredients to make a homemade two-person hot pot. He mixes the base material himself, which is not as spicy as sichuan hot pot, but also a little stronger than the "little fat cow", which is the favorite of both of us, and it is also a "big meal" of the week, accompanied by beer, while eating and chatting, very enjoyable. After learning to make steamed buns, every weekend, he would also steam a pot of steamed buns for my breakfast.

Over the course of more than a decade, these fixed programs have become my family's "sense of ceremony."

The term "sense of ceremony" should come from the human consciousness of "etiquette". Traditional etiquette is a sign of ancient civilization, influencing and restricting the ideological concepts and behavior habits of generations of people. In the Book of Verses, "the rat has a body, but the person is rude", which means that the mouse still has its appearance, how can a person have no etiquette. Crowns, marriages, dynasties, hiring, funerals, sacrifices, guests, village drinking, military service, are the nine rites of the ancients.

In modern times, festivals and ancestral sacrifices have become part of the rituals of family life. With the enrichment of material life and the infiltration of Eastern and Western cultures, there are more and more places where "rituals" are needed. In addition to traditional festivals, National Day, Labor Day, Women's Day, Children's Day, Father's Day, Mother's Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day were added out of thin air... Birthdays, in addition to shou noodles, there are more cakes, birthday parties, birthday parties, playgrounds, and so on.

One year on my birthday, my parents made an exception, invited several tables at home, and cooked a lot of good dishes. It's just that there may be too many guests that day, and everyone is so busy that they forgot about me. I was hungry and waited for someone to invite me to the table as a birthday star, and I couldn't wait for the left to wait until the guests dispersed, and my parents remembered me. I cried out in resignation and went on hunger strike in protest.

I believe that many parents now, like my mother, want to leave more memorable things on every windy day. In those "ritual senses", there is a longing for the years, the responsibility for the child's happy childhood and the expectation of a long life. It was only in the pursuit of a perfect "sense of ceremony" that the original intention was forgotten. In fact, what children want is nothing more than to have their parents by their side when they think it is important. Make dumplings together, keep the age together, read together, and grow together. Compared to the content of life, rituals are not as important as they think.

In the trivial and ordinary life, to experience the sacredness of being born as a human being, to learn to be in awe, to know how to be grateful, to cultivate children's benevolence, righteousness, etiquette, wisdom, faith, fraternity, bravery, and humility, is the true meaning of "ritual sense".

Some people have researched that in ancient times, the word "ceremony" was "shoes", which means shoes. Shoes are better to walk after putting on, but it is not okay to be big, and it is not good to be small, so the "etiquette" must be simple and moderate.

The "sense of ceremony" has found a suitable place for oneself, and there is no need to follow the crowd.