Under the epidemic, the content and methods of the New Year are innovating

The Spring Festival is an enduring cultural tradition. In the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly changed the history of the world, changed our daily lives, and changed the way festivals are celebrated. The Spring Festival life of Beijing residents presents two remarkable new situations:

First, there is a clear return to traditional customs. Beijing's traditional Spring Festival customs are very rich. "After the Lap 8 is the New Year", the curtain of the Beijing people's New Year is slowly opened in the fragrance of the Laba porridge, and after the 23rd festival of the Waxing Moon, the good drama of the busy year is staged in turn. Pan Rongxi, a Daxing man of the Qing Dynasty, recorded in the "Jisheng in the Age of Emperor Jing": "After sending the god of the stove, sweep away the ancestral hall house, paste the windows, paste the colored glass window eyes, cut the paper auspicious gourd, return the accounts, send the festival gift, Mr. Xie, help relatives and friends to feed charcoal, tidy the sacrificial vessels, wipe the things, steam the pastries, fry the lining offerings, spice spoon rice, cure the offerings, arrange the offerings, carve the tea fruits, hang the shadows of the shrine, set up a pine pavilion in the courtyard, offer the heavens and the earth, tie the sky lanterns, and hang the glass." "The variety of activities varies. In the Chinese New Year's Eve, the New Year has entered a climax, everyone changes into new clothes, the whole family reunites, worships ancestors, resigns the old year, and watches over the arrival of the New Year. On the first day of the Chinese New Year, families eat dumplings, visit temple fairs, and pay respects to each other. However, in modern times, due to changes in social life, many traditional customs have disappeared. Today, in the context of vigorously promoting china's excellent traditional culture, traditional festivals and customs have obviously returned, and more and more people have re-emphasized various rituals during the New Year, such as steaming steamed steamed buns, boiling large meat, cutting window flowers, reading Spring Festival, writing blessing characters, making lanterns, and so on. The taste of the year that had faded has also become stronger again.

Second, emerging practices continue to emerge. The most prominent is the diversification of the way of worshiping the New Year. In the past, Beijing residents paid great attention to personal visits to the New Year, emphasizing the expression of New Year's blessings through face-to-face communication. Nowadays, social mobility is fast, people's social relations are becoming more and more complex, and the circle of exchanges established through blood, marriage, geography, karma, ambition, and travel is expanding day by day. People make full use of new scientific and technological achievements to develop a variety of Ways to Celebrate the New Year through mobile phones, emails, Microblogs, etc., and WeChat New Year's Greetings is even more popular.

The outbreak of the new crown epidemic has made the new year in place a new phenomenon. Beijing has a large number of immigrants, and in the past, every Spring Festival, there was a short but large-scale migration. Advocating the local New Year has brought many people the trouble and regret of not being able to reunite with their families, but it has also reduced the pressure of the Spring Festival and spawned a new way to celebrate the New Year with friends, colleagues and neighbors in Beijing. "Hugging for warmth" has become a new choice for many people.

The outbreak of the new crown epidemic has also affected the holding of temple fairs. Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, the widely distributed and lively temple fairs have been a beautiful landscape during the Chinese New Year in Beijing. Under the epidemic, temple fairs have decreased, but theaters, museums, libraries, ice and snow fields, scenic spots, and revolutionary sites have taken on new responsibilities, and many people choose to punch in these places or participate in various cloud activities to let their festive life exude the characteristics of the capital and the taste of Beijing.

The new situation of the Spring Festival in recent years has fully demonstrated the cultural power of the Spring Festival and also made people rethink the significance and value of the Spring Festival. The Spring Festival is not an ordinary holiday, it is a day to remove the old cloth and make a new day, a day to drive away evil spirits and pray for good fortune, and a day of "one yuan resuming and everything in Vientiane renewing". In the days when the global epidemic is raging, the Spring Festival especially brings us confidence and hope in the face of difficulties: difficulties will always pass, and we will surely usher in a bright spring!

The new situation of the Spring Festival also fully demonstrates the good mentality and innovation ability of the broad masses of the people. The unprecedented length and geographical spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has tested both our mentality and our wisdom. It makes people reflect on the way people get along with nature, and also think about the relationship between people and the country, people and others, and people and themselves. We see that a social mentality of cherishing life, treating others well, uniting the family and the country, and sharing a common destiny is taking shape. This mentality makes many people take the initiative to respond to the call for the local New Year, awakening people's enthusiasm for living a good Spring Festival according to local conditions, so as to create new festival content and ways while inheriting traditional customs.

Source: Beijing Daily

Author: Zhang Bo

Editor-in-charge: Cong Ying

Review: Yang Qi

Disclaimer: In addition to the original content and special instructions, the text and pictures of the push manuscript are from the Internet and major mainstream media; please indicate the source of the original content reprint.

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