Among many traditional festivals in China, the Spring Festival is the most lively, followed by the Lantern Festival. However, in the Lingnan area of western Guangdong, there is a special festival to celebrate after the Spring Festival, which is a folk custom with local characteristics-Nian Gui. This annual festival is held every year in Gaozhou, Maonan, Maogang and neighboring Wuchuan countryside. The time of holding festivals every year varies from place to place. As long as it is concentrated in the lunar month after the Spring Festival (the old year), from the first day of the first lunar month to 65438+ the 30 th of the second lunar month, there are festivals throughout the region. In some places, there are two festivals a year, which are generally held in rural areas.

On this day this year, most people who go out will go back to their original villages and live year after year. Generally, the annual customs will last for three days. The first day is called "year after year", the second day is called "year after year", and the last day is called "year after year". Most activities throughout the year are superstitious activities. Before the start of the New Year, every family prepared chicken, pork and fish to make a pair of "three sacrifices" for the bodhisattva to enjoy, which is called "showing loyalty" or "setting the stove". Generally, on the first night of the first month, every family worships God together in the middle and then sets off firecrackers. On New Year's morning, the Bodhisattva visited the door. People carried bodhisattvas from house to house and followed a Taoist priest. When they got home, they muttered to themselves while dancing and danced with the Bodhisattva. It is very interesting and lively. If the village is large, the Bodhisattva will patrol the door from morning till night, hoping to complete the task. There will be many other programs on this day, such as puppet shows, lion dances, big plays and fireworks.

On this day, the host will also invite many relatives and friends to have a good drink, which is very lively. On the third morning, at the end of the year, the paper boat burned, and the Bodhisattva returned to the temple, ending the year. Tracing back to the history of chronology, as early as the Ming and Qing dynasties, there have been related records in local chronicles. From a historical point of view, the chronology was originally proposed by Xian, but its evolution process is not recorded in historical materials. In fact, the calendar year is an extended Lantern Festival, temple fairs, and the anniversary of ancestors' migration and settlement in Gaozhou, western Guangdong. The traditional Gregorian calendar year is mainly about worshipping God, religion and the country, and praying for good weather, peace and prosperity. During the Cultural Revolution, the chronological style was once regarded as the four old styles and was banned. It was not until the reform and opening up that the rural areas resumed the custom of making annual regulations. The current annual regulations pay more attention to window dressing. Many people use festival rules to show their wealth and status, which leads to the bad atmosphere of extravagance and comparison. This is indeed a disadvantage of the law.

With the deepening of reform and opening up and the development of rural economy, the contact between villagers and the outside world is deepening, especially among rural youth, and more and more people go out to work and do business. Deeply influenced by foreign cultures, they gradually ignored the traditional "New Year's Eve" in their hometown. The atmosphere of the New Year's Eve dinner has faded a lot, and other celebrations are also decreasing. In recent years, we have rarely seen dragon dances, dramas, ghost plays and puppet shows. These precious folk cultural heritages are in danger of extinction.