Off-year has different concepts and dates in different places. It's the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month in the north and the 24th of the twelfth lunar month in the south. In Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, the 24th of the twelfth lunar month and the night before New Year's Eve are all called off-year. In Nanjing, the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month is called off-year. The 16th day of the first month is celebrated in some parts of Yunnan, and New Year's Eve is celebrated in some minority areas in the southwest and north.

Off-year also means that people begin to prepare for new year's goods and have a clean and good year, which indicates that the new year will have a new atmosphere and expresses the good wishes of the working people in our country to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new.

Off-year is also a day of folk sacrifice. According to folklore, every year on the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month, Kitchen God will tell the Jade Emperor about the good and evil of this family and let the Jade Emperor reward and punish them. Therefore, when sending stoves, people put candy, water, beans and grass on the console table in front of the kitchen god statue; Among them, the last three are the mounts of the kitchen god ascending to heaven. When offering sacrifices to the stove, you should melt the Guandong sugar with fire and put it on the mouth of the kitchen god. In this way, he can't speak ill of the jade emperor There is a folk custom that "men don't Yue Bai, women don't offer sacrifices to stoves", so the owner of offering sacrifices to stoves is limited to men. In addition, on New Year's Eve, the Kitchen God will bring the gods to the world for the New Year, and there will be ceremonies of "receiving the kitchen" and "receiving the gods" on that day. Every family burns sedan chairs and horses, sprinkles three glasses of wine, and sends away the kitchen god, so it's their turn to worship their ancestors.