The Erya Shi Tian says: "The name of the old man, the name of the ripe, is the name of the year when it is ripe." "So, the year is a symbol of harvest and also for people to adjust the wind and rain. A beautiful hope for a good year with abundant grains.
Most of my family's Chinese New Year's Eve meals are made by the mother, at that time, every year into the Wax Moon Gate, the heart began to sweeten up, this mood with the "twenty-three, sugar melon sticky" more intense, the sacrifice stove in the folk is a big ceremony, by the people called "small year". "Send the king drunk and full to the gate of heaven, the long and short do not return to the clouds, and beg for the return of the city." If the Jade Emperor really wanted to listen to this report, he really couldn't be busy.
The Southern Dynasty Liang Zongyi recorded in the "Chronicle of the Jingchu Years" that "the family furniture of the year is humble, and the position of the old man is in the place of the old age, in order to welcome the New Year, and to gather and drink together." ”
Mother's Chinese New Year's EveChinese New Year's Eve meals are always inseparable from her "old three articles", even in the years when the days are not too rich, she is particularly good at "poor and rich", and the table always pays attention to the Chinese New Year's Eve of rice, what can not be missing is: fish, pig's trotters, and a plate of vegetarian assortment. These "old three" are necessary, year after year for decades.
The traditional Chinese New Year's Eve rice will have a complete carp on it, which means "more than one year". Fish, must be carp. Lu Tong of the Song Dynasty recorded in the "Pi Ya Shi Yu" that "it is said that the fish jumps over the dragon gate and becomes a dragon, but the carp may be natural." "Carp, take the auspiciousness of the year." When eating carp, there is also a special, to start from the middle to eat, and finally to leave a part, leaving the head and tail of the fish, symbolizing the surplus of the year, the grain is abundant.
At the New Year, the inseparable rule is to nibble on the pig's trotters, pig's trotters are also called pig hands, the mother said: they are all handed down from the elders, pig's feet in the New Year's customs mean 'holding money' rake, nibbling on pig's trotters is to give the next year a scratch. In the south, there is a famous dish called Fortune On Hand, which is made of pig's trotters, pig hands have the meaning of borrowing hands to get rich, and no one will compete with this beautiful meaning, so, in order to have a good intention, in many parts of our country, there is a custom of eating pig hands in the New Year. It's more about the symbolism it gives people.
Ruyi assortment can be said to be a home-cooked dish brought from Jiangnan. In the twenty years of life in Jiangnan, every New Year's Day, a delicious dish that the family must make, a plate of vegetarian dishes fried with soybean sprouts and dried incense and other ingredients, soybean sprouts are shaped like a handle of ruyi, known as ruyi, with its meaning of auspiciousness, more meaning of life is as it should be, take "everything is as expected, and shun long" means a good mouth.
Dumplings, that is the family Chinese New Year's Eve dinner on the table of the finale, for the Chinese New Year's Eve of dumplings, my family has a special exquisite, thirty nights of dumplings are wrapped in vegetarian stuffing, it is said that the meaning is far-reaching, can make this year vegetarian quiet, even the placement has rules. Put the dumplings with a round curtain, the dumplings should be placed in the middle first, and the rows should be arranged layer by layer in a circle, and should not be placed randomly. As the saying goes, "Get busy and don't let the dumplings go haphazardly." "My mother told me that this is called "circle blessing." This worldly bustle is always as new as ever.
On Chinese New Year's Eve day, the family first sacrificed, and in ancient times, this ritual was very popular. Due to the different customs of different places, the form of ancestor worship is also different, and most people now put offerings to the deceased family members at home, and the bowls are clothed with food, and then the worshippers kneel in the order of the elder and the youngest. I felt that the gods in heaven and the souls of our ancestors were so close to us that we even ate a piece of rice cake together and prayed for a peace wish for my family and myself.