From the thirtieth day of the twelfth lunar month to the fifth day of the first month, people call it the Spring Festival, which is also called "Chinese New Year". The Spring Festival is a rare festival for people to work hard for a year, so it is more grand. In order to celebrate this grand festival, people begin to prepare for the New Year as soon as they enter the twelfth lunar month. Villages and towns organize rehearsals of cultural programs, tie lanterns and practice folk songs and dances such as dragon lanterns, dry boats, bamboo horses and cars.
Every household buys new year's goods, clothes, utensils, preserved preserved chicken, preserved duck, preserved fish and other preserved foods. On the 25th and 6th of the twelfth lunar month, steamed buns, steamed buns, fried buns and various vegetables are started. However, people can't fry food on the 28th of the twelfth lunar month, and there is a taboo of "frying seven without frying eight".
December 30th of the lunar calendar is New Year's Eve. This afternoon, every household will post door gods and Spring Festival couplets to welcome the kitchen god. On New Year's Eve, every family hangs red lights, sets off firecrackers, lights candles, burns incense and paper, and worships ancestors and gods. The whole family get together to have New Year's Eve dinner, which is called "Reunion Year" or "Reunion Dinner". During the "reunion dinner", farmers will give them Niu Yi bowls of rice to show their respect for their hard work. Therefore, there is an agricultural proverb "Beat a thousand and scold ten thousand, and eat a bowl of rice for thirty nights". On New Year's Eve, the whole family stayed up all night, chatting and having fun. It's called "Shounian".
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the door gods evolved into adult paintings, and the Spring Festival couplets were constantly updated. Only "Shounian" has been preserved and passed down, but in recent years, due to the popularity of TV, watching the Spring Festival Gala on New Year's Eve has become the habit of thousands of households.
On the morning of the first day of the first month, adults and children put on new clothes, hats and shoes. Children pay New Year greetings to grandparents, parents and adults give them "lucky money". For breakfast, everyone eats jiaozi and puts vegetables in the pot, which symbolizes the population of Qingji and jiaozi, and also symbolizes the meaning of getting rich.
After breakfast, neighbors pay New Year greetings to each other and say "Congratulations on getting rich". From the second day of junior high school, relatives and friends pay New Year greetings to each other, usually first uncles and parents, then in-laws, and then other relatives and friends. After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), the activities of worshipping ghosts and gods gradually decreased, and the rituals of bowing down were mostly abolished. Shake hands and say hello to each other. The government organized a "group worship" and carried out military support activities in urban and rural areas to show the new era and fashion.