The Spring Festival is the most distinctive traditional festival in China, an ancient festival with a long history of more than 4,000 years. There are many theories about the origin of the Spring Festival, but the generally accepted theory is that the Spring Festival arose during the Yu Shun period. The Spring Festival generally refers to the first day of the first lunar month, which is the first day of the year, also known as the lunar calendar year, commonly known as the "New Year".
In the traditional culture, the Spring Festival is the first traditional festival in China, and the Spring Festival in the traditional sense refers to the festival from the wax festival of the WaxIng Moon or the sacrifice stove of the 23rd (Northern Small Year) or the 24th (Southern Small Year) to the 19th of the First Month, of which Chinese New Year's Eve and the first day of the first lunar month are the most solemn days of the Spring Festival.
Today's Spring Festival used to be called "Big Year", "New Year Festival" or "Nian Nian".
Here we focus on the concept of "years", because the Chinese word "years" is a word full of cultural connotations, such as the great Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi wrote in the poem "Late Spring Sending Yuanjiu": "But the sun and the moon are urgent, and the years are not years." The Tang Dynasty poet Liu Xiyi also sighed in "Generation of Sorrowful White-headed Ong": "The flowers are similar from year to year, but the years are different from year to year." ”
The concept of "age" is derived from the ancient calendar, which is explained in classical texts such as the Pangu King's Table and the Three Lives Tonghui: "The name of the emperor's clan is based on the place where the age is." ”
"Year" is the meaning of "regent", "regent" is the most classical name of the term "dry branch", also known as "year star", "too old". In the continental dry branch chronology, the cycle of sixty kosai is repeated.
In the development of inheritance, later generations simplified this multisyllabic term "Epoch of Reti" into one word, which is recorded in contrast with the simplified ganzhi in the Erya and the Records of History. For example, it is clearly recorded in the "Erya Shi Tian" that the age of the tai is in the Yin Yue Regent, and in the 卯曰單阏,...... In the child is sleepy, in the ugly day is red.
The ancients took the heavenly stem and earth branch as the carrier, the heavenly stem carried the way of heaven, and the earth branch carried the way of the earth; in the heavens, in the earth, in the human fortune; therefore, the heavenly stem and the earth branch were set up to match the fortune of the heavens and the earth.
After explaining the "years", let's look at the meaning of the term "Spring Festival".
"Spring Festival" is an ancient Chinese word, according to historical records, "Spring Festival" in the Han Dynasty refers to the "Li Chun" day in the twenty-four solar terms, the Southern Dynasty Song Dynasty historian Fan Ye compiled the Chronicle of the Later Han Dynasty Yang Zhen Biography recorded: "The Spring Festival did not rain, hundreds of officials were anxious, and the cultivation was not stopped, and the march of drought was also sincere." ”
The "Spring Festival" of this period is a proper noun, which refers specifically to the day of "Lichun" in the twenty-four solar terms, which is the festival of Lichun and the festival of welcoming spring; during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, people called the whole spring Spring Festival. However, most dynasties referred to "Lichun" as the Spring Festival. Therefore, the ancient Spring Festival was not the beginning of the New Year.
According to historical records, the Xia Dynasty beheaded the first day of the first lunar month, the Shang Dynasty took the first day of the first month of the twelfth month of the lunar calendar as the first year, and the Zhou Dynasty took the first day of the first month of the first month of the lunar calendar as the first year.
In the earliest poetry collection on the mainland, the Book of Poetry, there is a poem called "July", which vividly records the scene of people in the Western Zhou Dynasty who made wine and slaughtered sheep after harvesting in October: "Rice is harvested in October, and for this spring wine, it is to introduce Meishou." ...... October Polyester Field ,...... Kill the lamb. But this scene in "July" is not the first festival and the customary event.
The calendar used by the Qin Dynasty was the "Lunar Calendar", which stipulates that the first day of the tenth month of the lunar calendar is the first year, but the "Lunar Calendar" has certain errors.
More than 2,000 years ago, in the middle of the Western Han Dynasty, that is, in the first year of the First Year of emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty (104 BC), Emperor Wudi of han promulgated the "Taichu Calendar", also known as the "Jia Calendar", which is the first relatively complete Han calendar in ancient China.
Whether it is astronomical accuracy or the twenty-four solar terms that assist agricultural production, the "Taichu Calendar" was a set of advanced calendars that led the world at that time, and the "Taichu Calendar" stipulated that a return year was a year, and a synodic month was a month, so it was also called "eighty-one law calendar".
The "Taichu Calendar" corrects the first day of the first month of the new year as the beginning of the new year, and has not changed since then.
Since before Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty promulgated the "Taichu Calendar", the first year of the New Year was changed with the change of dynasties, so the ancient Spring Festival customs were not directly related to the "New Year". However, after the promulgation of the "Primeval Calendar", the difference between Lichun and the beginning of the year or before or after is only a few days, in the same period of time, so people celebrate the New Year and welcome the New Year at the same time, which is a unique scene around the first day of the first month of the ancient Lunar New Year.
The years do not live, the seasons are like a stream. Since the promulgation of the "Taichu Calendar", the time has flickered to the beginning of the 20th century, and the significance of the new year and the time significance of the Spring Festival seem to have not changed much in these two thousand years, and they have quietly passed through the same.
The time node when the new year significance and the time significance of the Spring Festival ushered in the real change is the Xinhai Revolution, which made the tradition and modernity intersect a little more.
Since the Xinhai Revolution, people have called the first day of the first lunar month of the Lunar New Year the Spring Festival, and the Spring Festival has a new connotation and time significance of the new year's head.
On New Year's Day in 1912 (the first day of the first lunar month), Sun Yat-sen became the provisional president, and he followed the tradition of re-establishing the "imperial calendar" in ancient times, and then announced that China abolished the old calendar and adopted the solar calendar (that is, the Gregorian calendar), using the Republic of China chronicle, January 1 of the solar calendar as the beginning of the "New Year's Day" New Year.
In July 1913 (the second year of the Republic of China), Zhu Qizhao, then minister of internal affairs, submitted a report to Yuan Shikai on the four-season holiday: "The old customs of the mainland, the four-season festival every year, should be clearly stipulated, and it is proposed to designate the lunar new year's Day as the Spring Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival as the Summer Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival as the Autumn Festival, and the Winter Solstice as the Winter Festival. ”
However, Yuan Shikai only approved the spring festival on the first day of the first lunar month, agreed to the spring festival routine holiday, and began to implement it in 1914, from then on, the first "New Year's Day" of the previous summer calendar was renamed "Spring Festival".
People accept the title "Spring Festival" because it not only distinguishes the Gregorian New Year's Day, but also because it is around the "Lichun", "Spring Festival" indicates the arrival of spring and the beginning of the New Year, which is consistent with the meaning of the beginning of the year.
In the Book of Han, China's first chronicle chronicle compiled by the Eastern Han Dynasty historian Ban Gu, it is said: "The land is relocated, and the nature of the people is; flesh and bones are attached, and human feelings are also willing." ”
Relocating is an ancient tradition of the mainland, which is deeply integrated into the hearts of every chinese person, and has gradually formed a unique national culture and customs in the land where they have lived and worked in peace and contentment for generations.
"New Year" best represents the ancient people's understanding of this traditional culture. No matter how it changes, whether it is the "New Year's Day" or the current "Spring Festival", every Chinese people's hearts are extremely clear: the first day of the first lunar month is the traditional customs and culture handed down for thousands of years in this land.
In ancient times, the spring day, which was originally called the "Spring Festival", was held to welcome the arrival of spring. Winter to spring, Vientiane renewed. People pay special attention to the arrival of spring, and the spring ceremony is an important agricultural etiquette, which has lasted for nearly two thousand years in China and has a wealth of related folk customs.
The Spring Ceremony of the Eastern Han Dynasty was held in the early morning of Lichun "five minutes before the night leaks". The Spring Ceremony of the Song Dynasty, according to the Song Dynasty Meng Yuanlao's notebook "Tokyo Dream Hualu" volume Liuyun: "On the day before the spring, the Kaifeng Province entered the spring cattle, and entered the forbidden whip spring. Kaifeng and Xiangfu counties placed spring cattle in front of the palace, and in the early morning of the day, the government officials beat the spring. ”
One of the prominent folk customs of yingchun is the whipping of earth cattle, so the folk call the ceremonial activities of yingchun "whipping spring cattle" or "beating spring cattle", or simply "beating spring cattle".
"Whip spring cattle" is to break the spring cattle made of soil or paper, this kind of traditional culture, its origin is to continue the pre-Qin folk late winter to meet the cold and the yang, the earth cattle to break the "side of the earth cattle" spring customs. In the area of Tianshui in Gansu, the hometown of Xiao talk, the old people in the countryside still call "Lichun" "Fighting Spring".