Xin Ugly Spring Festival is looking forward to coming, and immediately drifts away. This year is different from previous years, because the Year of the Gengzi Rat was affected by the new crown epidemic, hundreds of millions of people were isolated at home and too many projects for the Spring Festival were deleted, and the silence of the land of Shenzhou after the Spring Festival was really a rare encounter in a thousand years. Now that everyone can come out and have fun, they can get back the New Year's flavor that was deleted last year.
Browsing the circle of friends in recent days, the New Year is the most blowout theme, but there are still countless nostalgic people who often complain that there is no New Year's flavor, because every middle-aged and elderly person has his own warm memories of the year, but young people rarely have such sighs.
In my memory, the earlier the time, the stronger the flavor of the year, and then more and more faint, like white wine and red wine and beer.
My earliest memories of the New Year are prostrations, and the elders have coaxed our little playmates since the waxing moon: "It's almost the New Year, be obedient!" Don't cause trouble, there will be a reward in the year. "On the first day of the Chinese New Year, I was led to the homes of the elders to pay respects to the Elders, asking them to kowtow to the grandmothers and grandfathers, and the occasional reward was just a bunch of peanuts and rice. My playmate little brother Jun didn't know what kind of ecstasy soup his mother had poured, and he actually dragged me to his grandmother's house again, and our second grandmother's house and the fourth grandmother's family (my grandmother's family was the eldest of the long branches) prostrated like pounding garlic, and tricked me into saying how many bumps the grandmothers would give as much reward as they wanted. I was suspicious, confused and followed a lot of prostrations, prostrating my head, but I did not even see a penny of reward, so my young soul was very hurt, and I resolutely did not kowtow in the New Year. Because it is not rare to eat peanuts and rice, I hate the smell of the old people's choking nose and spicy smoke in the roasting brazier in the dark little adobe house.
But after all, in the new few days of the New Year, you can eat fatty pork, and there is also the opportunity to open the yellow grass paper bag and secretly take out the pastries inside to eat. Grandma would sometimes reward me with some malted milk, and the sweet taste of wheat milk is still unforgettable. In my childhood impression, from the lantern festival of Chinese New Year's Eve to the lantern festival of turnip lamps, more than half a month is the New Year. During this period, you can follow the adults to relatives, and the relatives will fry four, six or even eight plates of dishes and wine, even if the teenage boys go alone, while the women can not go to the banquet, can only clean the leftovers after the man is full of wine and food.
Everyone walks with a basket, walks or bikes in the morning, and returns before dark in the afternoon. Baskets or baskets woven with rattan strips are covered with red cloth and contain half a basket of wheat or white flour, half-buried eggs in the flour wheat, two or four bottles of 'Double Koshi', 'Jingzhi Baigan', 'Lanling Daqu' liquor, two or four packs of ginger shredded, peach pastry or canned oranges. Now I don't understand: why don't you send the crispy vegetables that must be fried years ago? The heaviest gift is a large piece of unpackaged pork with skin, to be hoisted from the handlebars of a bicycle with a rope. When I go home, because I still have to take the basket back, my relatives will return half of the pastry and liquor. And the pork that the relatives must cut, because the relatives have a time difference and the overlap between relatives, often happen that the pork they bought turned around for a few days, and then they were sent back to their homes by other relatives. In the era when there were no refrigerators in the countryside, it was likely that this meat would taste strange, but it was rare to hear of women who had a bad stomach and lived a careful life to squeeze oil with stinky meat.
In that era of material poverty, the boxes of wine sent were only given up when asking people to do things, and many able people's homes were filled with tobacco and alcohol after years. It is said that the neighbors of a factory director follow the light every New Year and eat a lot of seafood, roast chicken, roast duck that the factory director can't consume... Ordinary people have never seen the mountains and treasures of the sea tasted first, so they love to joke that they have never seen the world's old hat poverty limits imagination, thinking that the good life of the president of the country is to eat eggs or fritters every day.
The custom of ancestor worship in our hometown is relatively thick, and the first thing Chinese New Year's EveChinese New Year's Eve is not to paste couplets, but to hold a handful of incense and rush to the ancestral grave woodland, prostrate and set off firecrackers, and chant words in the mouth to call the old (the souls of the ancestors) to go home for the New Year. Half of the incense is inserted in the grave, the other half of the incense is left in the hand, and then hurry home, insert the incense in front of the ancestral tablet, and then stop a long wooden stick at the gate, which means that the old one can no longer go out, and don't be pulled by other people's homes for the New Year. On the third or sixth day of the new year, take away the wooden stick, take the incense and send the old one away, and send it out of the village or outside the bridge. During the Chinese New Year, on the indoor ancestral shrine and the courtyard patio of the Shrine incense case, in addition to the whole chicken fried fish, the dumplings and hard dishes for three meals a day at home must first be placed for the gods to eat for a while before the family can eat. This kind of ancestral worship has been passed down since ancient times, at least in my childhood, and every household strictly followed it, but now there are not so many rules. One year, because the male adults of our own clan were busy, we arranged for a few boys of different sizes to go to the ancestral woodland to invite the old Man for the New Year, and when he was leaving, he confessed that he would prostrate his head three times in front of the grave and then chant: "The old people all follow the little ones home for the New Year." We rushed to Zulin with excitement, and under the leadership of Brother Qing, we prostrated our heads, giggled and laughed and said, "The old one goes with the little one", and overheard a harsh childish voice, "The old and the little ones are following me to drink urine!" "It turned out that the five-year-old little brother was peeing in the sky next to him." After a moment of silence, QingGe angrily rushed over and kicked the little brother's ass twice, kicking him wow and crying, his pants were wet, and he kept whimpering and following us, keeping a distance of thirty meters to go home, and no one paid any attention to him.
A few days before the Spring Festival, the cultural people in the village are the busiest, and the neighbors and even the neighbors of the whole street are looking for teachers to write the Spring Festival, and their homes are indispensable to send 'white lotus', 'big front door', 'big chicken' cigarettes. Sticking the Spring Festival League is all the work of men, and some illiterate people often make jokes about pasting the couplet up and down or pasting the "six animals thriving" on the pigsty. I also wrote a few years of Spring League for the neighbors, once copied a sentence for the third uncle "Cannon Town Wanghai Lou" of the union, did not expect him to take it home and then came back to ask for a return, saying that the big New Year's Paste what 'Cannon Town Building' is not good, I can't help but look at the third uncle who only has two years of education.
In the New Year, the woman wants to spend the cloth and the man wants the cannon, and the old man wants to wear a small felt hat. Boys will have enough firecrackers, cannon throwing, angry fires, and may change into new clothes, and girls may be happy with just a few heads of flowers or a flower scarf. But what is the reward for couples who work for a whole year for a family? Facing the elderly and children, they may feel more like the New Year. So in those years, acquaintances, relatives and friends met years ago, and the often polite words were: "How are the preparations for the New Year?" What new year goods are still missing at home? The greeting that hangs on the lips during the New Year is "Is the New Year a good time?" "Hello! Hello! "In fact, I really know how to live in my heart." If someone asks who lacks anything for the New Year now, it is estimated that they will be suspected of deliberately nesting people, and it is the poverty alleviation cadres who have made the wrong object and caused embarrassment.
The taste of the year fades, just as flowers and fruits have passed the shelf life and have no sweetness, while the air-dried hardcore retains only the form. Many good people clamor to lift the ban on firecrackers in urban areas every spring before the Spring Festival, blaming the government for banning fireworks and making them lose their New Year's flavor, but can every household fire crackling and deafening firecrackers make the New Year taste return? Many years ago, how many people gritted their teeth at this noise, eager to bless the firecracker operators with losses and bankruptcies, which was more infuriating than the sudden power outage at the Chinese New Year's Eve wonderful moments of the Spring Festival Gala.
Where did Nian Wei escape? Are today's dumplings not fragrant? Is it that the food is not delicious today? Or are today's relatives and friends less enthusiastic and sincere than they used to be?
No, now the material conditions are much better than in the eighties, people's working and living conditions are very superior, vacation and leisure time is more, the interaction and exchange of relatives and friends is significantly more than before, relatives and friends are more emotional than material, and there is less of a phenomenon of brothers in that era for trivial matters.
Why did the taste of the year fade?
Because the current life is rich and beautiful and full, everyone is as comfortable as the New Year every day, if it is not the customs of the New Year, which day is not like the New Year? Happiness at your fingertips is no longer rare. Besides, people's thinking is changing too fast now, and the ancestral worship is no longer as strong as before, so the old rules of the New Year have been simplified, so there is not so much piety for the New Year. Lacking a sense of ceremony, the taste of the New Year was also scattered and faint, fading out of the sincere trepidation of sending the king of the stove; fading out of the pride of men personally making coins; fading out of the reverence and worship of ancestral tablets; fading out of the burning incense of the Jade Emperor Shrine that dominates the Three Realms of Heaven and Earth; fading out of the taboo of not talking indiscriminately and not crying on the first day of the New Year; the mysterious fear of superstitious taboos is difficult to infect the shrewd and pragmatic minds of modern people, leaving only good food, drink, fun, and family reunion and joy, and the New Year is just a long holiday family gathering for the whole people.
Therefore, the escape of the new year is not worth regretting, just like the window paper cut flowers are gone, the glass plastic steel floor-to-ceiling windows are coming, and the world in front of you is clearer and more transparent.
One point number Chen Fucun