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Editor's note: On the occasion of the Spring Festival, the WeChat public account of "Exploration and Controversy" specially planned the "Spring Festival Caprice" column, inviting a number of humanities and social science scholars to talk about their individual experiences and learning feelings in the past year. Through full and keen brushstrokes, or narrative, or lyricism, or discussion, or academic exploration, or cultural perception, or realistic thinking, scholars provide a feast of unique ideas for readers who have long cared for and supported "Exploration and Controversy". A series of articles will be launched during the festival. "Exploration and Controversy" would like to wish everyone a happy Chinese New Year!
A cross-cultural interpretation of the origin of the Spring Festival
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Wang Qingjia | Professor of History at Rowan University
This article is a special column of the WeChat public account of "Exploration and Controversy"
Unless noted, the pictures in the text are from the Internet
Overseas Chinese can't celebrate the Spring Festival? I think this may be something that people in China are a little concerned about, because every year at the Spring Festival Gala, the host will almost always have a speech to extend Spring Festival greetings to Chinese people around the world. Whether this greeting can be heard or seen by the audience or audience being greeted is naturally another matter. At least in the era when the Internet was not very developed, even if overseas Chinese had the heart, it was difficult to watch the Spring Festival Gala with the domestic public. In other words, even if overseas Chinese celebrate the Spring Festival, their form is very different from that of people at home.
The first is because there is no such long holiday as in China. In the United States, where I live, the Spring Festival is regarded as a religious and cultural festival, and if the Chinese propose to the unit to take a vacation on that day, it is understandable. A colleague in my unit believes in orthodox Judaism and often takes a few more days off than the average person on many Jewish holidays. But as far as I know, chinese people rarely do this, perhaps because they have to spend a good year and take a day off. And delaying work and teaching is still something you need to worry about. Secondly, children do not take holidays, because the winter vacation of Western schools is at the end of the year and the beginning of the year. The Spring Festival is located at the end of January and the beginning of February, and the school has already opened. As the saying goes, children are the happiest during the holidays. The children are busy doing their homework, who has the heart to have a good holiday? Of course, with the increase in Asian immigration, the Spring Festival has gradually been listed as a holiday by some school districts (my school district is one example), and the leaders of the city will also pay tribute to the Asian community celebrating the Spring Festival (or "Lunar New Year"). But because it is also a one-day holiday, the festive atmosphere is not very strong. However, around the Spring Festival, many Chinese people will still find a night, get together, drink and chat, "What night is this evening, he said hometown."
Of course, in places where Chinese people gather, such as Chinatown in big cities, the situation is obviously different. On the day of the Spring Festival, the streets are often lit with lights, gongs and drums, the sound of firecrackers, shops handing out gifts, and lion dances on the streets, attracting many people of other ethnic groups to watch. Such a scenario is not common in domestic estimates. Immigrants left their homeland and often sought to retain more traditional culture. This is true of the fact that the restaurants in Chinatown are almost uniform in their worship of bodhisattvas, and have decorations such as red and green, golden splendor and so on (whether these decorations represent traditional Chinese culture is another matter). As an aside, it is said that the words spoken by quebecers in Canada today are closer to the French language of two hundred years ago, and there are obvious differences with the language of contemporary French, which shows the cultural migration around the world, and perhaps some common features.
In a word, overseas Chinese celebrate the Spring Festival, which is very different from china. However, the above mentioned some of the similarities of local cultures, and the author has lived overseas for many years and is from a history background, so I am a little curious about the origin of the Spring Festival in China, and I took the opportunity to write this article and share it with readers. As we all know, the name "Spring Festival" has a very short history compared to China's long history. It was only determined at the beginning of the establishment of the Republic of China. Of course, Chinese the history of the New Year has a long history, that is, people celebrate the arrival of the New Year, which has a long history. But the question is, when is the beginning of the new year or the beginning of the year? In the long history of China, when the first year is set is not the same. For example, the Xia Shang Zhou has its own annual calendar, the first year of the Summer Calendar is Meng Chun, and the Shang Calendar and the Zhou Calendar are in winter. The beginning of the new year in the Qin and Han dynasties was in the cold winter month. Now we live the Spring Festival based on the summer calendar, which is said to have been established after Wu Zetian ascended the throne in the Tang Dynasty. I have not done any research on this, but I think of a poem in the Tang Dynasty: "This year is the end of this night, next year tomorrow is urgent." The cold goes with the night, and the spring comes more and more. And Wang Anshi of the Song Dynasty has a famous verse of "in the sound of firecrackers, the spring breeze sends warmth into Tu Su", thinking that from that time on, the new year should be in the early spring.
However, from the perspective of world culture, winter festivals seem to be more common, and Chinese actually has the saying of "winter solstice and new year". In the agricultural society before modern times, after the autumn harvest, people were able to have some free time in the winter, and it was very reasonable to take the opportunity to set a festival and enjoy the fruit. As mentioned above, Judaism has many festivals, and its New Year (Rosh Hashanah) is set at the end of September and October in the Gregorian calendar, a harvest season. The tenth day after the New Year's celebration is their most important Yom Kippur day . In other words, after enjoying the fruits of labor, you need to reflect on your sins for the year and hope to be redeemed the following year. In recent years in the United States, the celebration of Hanukkah or Hanukkah has become increasingly common among Jews, apparently related to its date in December, which is close to Christmas and New Year, although in terms of Jewish tradition, pre-Hanukkah is not very important. Similarly, African Americans are celebrating Kwanzaa, which originated as a harvest festival in West and East and South Africa. Its celebration is scheduled for December 26 to the Gregorian New Year, and most holidays are taken across the United States, which naturally contributed to its popularity.
If in cultures around the world, winter has many examples and reasons for celebrating festivals and New Year's holidays, what about spring? In fact, looking around the world, spring is also a season to celebrate festivals, such as the Hindu Holi festival is like the Chinese Spring Festival, which is held in March to welcome the arrival of spring. But do people celebrate the spring only for the sake of seasonal changes? This is not the case. The Judaism's New Year and Yom Kippur, already mentioned above, are both celebrated with joy and the need for deep reflection. Other cultural festivals have similar dualities, but the order is not exactly the same.
For example, in European Catholic traditions, there is also a period of fasting or Lent, which is scheduled for February and March, and before the arrival of fasting, there is a carnival or carnival, where people eat and drink, have fun, and watch parades. When the fasting period began, the believers began to eat and drink again, meditating for up to forty days. At the end of the fasting period, it is the important Easter.
China's traditional culture does not have such a strong religious color, but from a cross-cultural perspective, the ancient Chinese New Year is either in winter or in spring, in fact, it also has the meaning of celebrating the harvest, enjoying life and reflecting on the past. Comparisons are often clumsy, but immature speculation is that the Shang and Zhou calendars and the Qin and Han dynasties set the beginning of the new year in the cold winter (winter October to December), and the new year in other cultures mentioned above (South Asia also has its important Diwali festival "Diwali" in this season) and Kwanza festival and other festivals to celebrate harvests, in terms of time and meaning, are very similar, while the summer calendar and the Tang and Song dynasties later set the new year in early spring according to the summer calendar, which is quite similar to the Christian carnival. As a result, although the Chinese Spring Festival has the form of carnival, it seems to have a deeper meaning. As the beginning of the new year, it not only reflects the change of seasons, but also tries to open a new stage of life, that is, to do leisure and pleasure after the harvest, and to start working again, after all, three months later, it is the Cold Food Festival and the Qingming Festival, which is the time to report the achievements to the ancestors and gods, ask for forgiveness, and ask for blessings. In other words, when the Ancient Chinese celebrated the Spring Festival, there was not only the hustle and bustle of celebration and joy, but also the reflection of raising eyebrows and frowning. In many parts of China, the custom of eating and eating Chinese New Year's Eve meals is often preceded by the ritual of worshiping heaven and earth and worshipping ancestors. Ancient literati and poets often exude the emotion of lamenting life and thinking deeply at the beginning of the year, and Wen Tianxiang wrote in the Chinese New Year's Eve night that "life is exhausted with the years, the body is forgotten; there is no revenge to slaughter Su Dream, pick the lamp at night", which is a true portrayal of this complex feeling, which is worth revisiting today to experience the multiple meanings of the traditional festival of the Spring Festival.
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