A few days ago, I was with the small partner of the selection department to pick out the group products. Because it is almost the New Year, we have picked a lot of good things related to the New Year, and incidentally also talked about the topic of the New Year.
While everyone was talking about the customs of various places, a colleague sighed and said:
"I feel that the taste of the year is getting weaker and weaker now, saying that it is a family reunion, lively and lively together, and as a result, the children are active in addition to taking the money of the year, and the rest are looking at the mobile phone, and they do not say a word."
Several colleagues followed suit:
"We also think that the New Year is quite boring now."
Years, more and more devoid of the taste of the year. When we were young, we often said that "after the eighth year is the year". Because after the eighth day, every household must start to prepare to clean the house, prepare the menu of Chinese New Year's Eve early, and the strong new year flavor is rushing in the busyness and expectation.
But this year, Lapa has passed a long time ago, and until now, I still don't have any Feeling of new year.
It is also the New Year, why do you feel very different?
Later, I thought about it and found that the reason was actually - no hope.
When I was a child, the material conditions were not so good, and I could only look forward to wearing new clothes, setting off firecrackers, eating delicious food during the New Year, and watching the Grand Spring Festival Gala with a grand scale and stars, which was naturally full of expectations. But now the material level has risen sharply, delicious food, good clothes can be bought at any time, good-looking programs can be seen at any time, and there is naturally nothing special about the New Year.
In previous years, I could also take a small often visiting the temple fair and viewing the flower lanterns to feel the atmosphere of the New Year. But in the past two years since the epidemic struck, let alone visiting the temple fair, even visiting the shopping mall has to put a question mark. In recent times, many places have advocated "local New Year", and this year is likely to be cold and cold.
So, how to help children find the taste of the year?
I and Xiao Xiaochang like to watch documentaries, inventory of the few films we have seen related to the Spring Festival, I found that in fact, they all contain the key to finding the taste of the New Year, but also very insightful, if you feel that the Taste of the Year is not enough, I recommend that you all look at it together.
The taste of the year is warmth and warmth
The first documentary was called "New Year's Eve", which was a series of documentaries filmed by CCTV and filmed for 2 seasons.
The first season has 3 episodes, which record the process of several families celebrating the Spring Festival in the small town of Ula Street in Jilin Province, and show the Spring Festival customs of the Manchus in detail.
The second season has 5 episodes. Compared with the first season, this season spans a wider time and region, involving the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter, and more than 30 peasant families in the three eastern provinces.
If you summarize the common features of the two seasons of documentaries, you can probably call them:
"The Spring Festival of China on the Tip of the Tongue Special Edition".
Yes, the film is how everyone prepares Chinese New Year's Eve meal.
In the eyes of many people, Chinese New Year's Eve meal is a relatively sumptuous dinner, and the dishes often contain auspicious meanings. But in the footage of this documentary, there is a deeper meaning of the Chinese New Year's Eve meal.
It is not a rich dinner, but an opportunity to reinterpret what "home" is.
Chinese New Year's Eve rice, the girl Yang Junting insisted on stir-frying a dish for her father. She asked Grandpa for two eggs, crushed them, and poured them into a frying pan.
She is one of the few left-behind children in the village and has been living with her grandparents since the age of 6. His parents and brother opened a small restaurant in Shanxi, and they could only come back every year at the time of the New Year.
The New Year became a brief gathering time for her and her parents. Since her father returned, Junting has followed her father without a word. Dad cooked, she laid hands; Dad ate, she clipped the scrambled eggs she made into Dad's bowl, and then watched Dad carefully pick up the eggs and put them in his mouth to chew.
Food full of tenderness and memory has become the best medium for transmitting love between father and daughter. Chinese New Year's Eve meal, but also let everyone sitting at the table experience that we are a family.
It is not a family gathering for a meal, but a return of family affection.
Choe Hanako's family in Yaoshui Village is a Korean, and in order to let her daughter in South Korea eat wild vegetables that she thinks about day and night, she will go to the mountains every spring to pick wild vegetables, then wash, blanch, cool, and divide them into several parts and put them in the refrigerator to freeze.
The wild vegetables would stay in the refrigerator from spring to winter, and it wasn't until the day her daughter returned that Cui Hanako would take them out.
Early in the morning, Cui Huazi got up to Zhang Luo's daughter's dinner, jiangmi chicken, fried fish, dumplings...
And, of course, my daughter's favorite wild vegetables. She thawed the wild vegetables in the refrigerator, put in various seasonings and condiments, poured hot oil, and it was done.
A seemingly simple dish spans four seasons, condensing a mother's love for her daughter.
In this documentary, it also tells the Chinese New Year's Eve of many people's homes and the life stories behind them. People living in different regions have very different dishes and methods of Chinese New Year's Eve meals, and everyone's life experiences are also very different.
But it doesn't matter, every home-cooked dish is full of love and warmth, which is the most delicious and anticipated Chinese New Year's Eve meal on the whole table.
The taste of the year is a sense of comfort
If the documentary of the "New Year" series allows people to feel the taste of the Year on the tip of the tongue through the narration of "eating", then "Spring Festival" is to let people feel the historical origin of the Spring Festival in the ceremony through the customs of worshiping gods and praying for blessings during the Spring Festival.
When I was a child, I always felt that it was all feudal superstition, and it was the four olds that should be discarded. But when I watched this film, I realized that behind every seemingly cumbersome link, there is the simplest desire of human beings, including the great wisdom of harmonious coexistence between man and nature.
The documentary "Spring Festival" is divided into 5 episodes, each episode has a theme, namely reunion, sacrifice, exorcism, prayer, and lantern festival. The second episode tells the story of the once-in-a-decade festival in Sanyuan Village, Jingu Town, Anxi County, Fujian Province.
The ancestor they sacrificed was Emperor Fuxi, and behind this object of sacrifice, there is a story of the migration of a family.
It is said that 500 years ago, the ancestors of this village migrated from Henan to Fujian. At that time, the people of Henan believed in Fuxi very much, and they brought the tradition of sacrificing Fuxi to Fujian.
The people in the village believe that the sacrifice of Fuxi can bless the safety of the villagers, and participating in the ceremony of the gods is the unshirkable mission of every villager.
The preparation of the sacrifice is very complicated, mainly including the selection of the day, washing the palanquin, and setting up the roof, which lasts from the fifth day of the Chinese New Year to the seventh day of the Chinese New Year.
Interestingly, they used the way of lifting a stool to decide on the auspicious time of the sacrifice to the gods.
At four o'clock in the morning on the fifth day of the first lunar month, the villagers will carry the palanquin to a Taoist temple ten kilometers away to get a fire. This fire is regarded as a holy fire, and whoever can use this fire to light incense indicates who can receive God's protection.
This ritual comes from the allusion of "Fuxi taking fire", and it is said that it is Fuxi who teaches people to learn to use fire, get rid of the life of Ru Mao drinking blood, and part ways with animals.
After receiving the sacred flame, the villagers will return to the same way and take the sacred flame to the ancestral hall in the village.
On the same night, the village will also perform the gaojia drama unique to southern Fujian.
The next day, the villagers would use two special palanquins to invite two statues of Fuxi to parade around the village. At this time, each family will put a tribute on the offering table in front of the Fuxi Temple.
After the parade, I also asked the pigs to be presented to Fuxi. After killing the pigs, the ceremony of worshiping the gods officially began.
After the ceremony is completed, people will pile up the paper lanterns and banknotes to burn them, indicating that the tribute and blessings are dedicated to Fuxi.
This link, known as "burning lamp material", is the last link and the most lively time in the whole ceremony. When the fire is extinguished, it means that the ceremony of worship is over. After that, people will go their separate ways to the west and the east, each seeking a future.
On the surface, this worship service may seem useless, but it is a rare opportunity to bring the whole village together.
It is like a pause button, allowing everyone to stop busy, reminisce about the past of the village, and think about the future of the village. Now that more and more people are going out of the village and into the city, and the connection between the villagers is less, and the emotions are weakened, such a time together is particularly precious, and it is also silently telling people not to forget history and remain in awe.
The taste of the year is to find the memories of childhood
With the rapid improvement of national strength and influence, the Spring Festival has become not only a festival for Chinese, but also a festival that people around the world are concerned about.
In 2016, the British BBC produced a documentary about the Chinese New Year, called "Chinese New Year, the World's Biggest Celebration".
From the name alone, we can guess how this documentary will tell the Chinese New Year.
That's right, the most intuitive numbers (scare them to death).
For example, the number of passengers sent across China's highways during the Spring Festival every year is as high as 3.2 billion.
During the Spring Festival, there will be 54 million air trips.
During the Spring Festival, there will be more than 250 million railway trips. In previous years, 5.6 million train tickets were sold in one day.
and the world's largest motorcycle migration team.
There is also the world's largest ice and snow festival , the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival.
Compared with the previous two New Year's documentaries, this BBC documentary is more like an encyclopedia of New Year's customs. Several hosts in the film rushed to all parts of the country to introduce the unique New Year's activities in each place.
It is in this film that I have a deep feeling, that is, the so-called New Year's taste is actually localization, and the more traditional cultural places are retained, the stronger the New Year's taste.
The reason why many people feel that there is no taste of the year in the big city is actually because it is too far away from history, folklore, and childhood.
With a sense of ceremony, there is a taste of the Year
At the moment of material abundance, many people have lost the sense of ritual that their ancestors attached the most importance to.
In "The Little Prince", it is said that the sense of ceremony is to make a certain day different from other days, to make a certain moment different from other moments.
For example, the Fuxi Ceremony in Anxi, Fujian Province, seems to be very cumbersome, but because of these complicated rituals, people feel that this day is different from other days.
If you don't wear special clothes, don't eat special food, and don't have any special activities during the New Year, then the New Year is no different from a normal day.
So what should we do to increase the taste of the year?
I think a good thing to do is to deliberately add trouble to yourself and your children, so that every day of the New Year has a sense of ceremony.
For example, add some objects that represent the New Year, couplets, lanterns, paper cuts, window flowers, red envelopes, etc., to buy children With beautiful meanings of New Year clothes.
For example, to retain some of the past New Year customs, pickle eight garlic, clean the house, make dumplings, etc., take the child to the relative's house to visit the New Year, the child must respectfully give the elders a New Year's greeting to get red envelopes.
For example, prepare some group activities, such as board games, poker, mahjong or idiom solitaire, try to mobilize everyone...
(Stills from the Chinese New Year movie "Wishing you prosperity")
At the moment when everything pursues convenience and efficiency, and the fast pace is popular, the New Year can let us slow down and feel the beauty of life in a specific and small thing.
So, what exactly is Nian Wei'er? It is the joy of family reunion, the openness of the heart, the warmth of mutual comfort and the stable sense of security.
New Year' Eve is a sense of ceremony. It is these senses of ceremony that piece together the taste of the New Year and become the most beautiful memories of childhood.