As the saying goes, "There are two taboos in going to the grave during the New Year, and if you commit it, you will lose your wealth".
Since the establishment of the ritual music system in the Zhou Dynasty, etiquette has always occupied a very important position in China's traditional culture. Because of the importance of politeness on any occasion, our country is also known as the state of etiquette. To this day, each of us must observe certain rituals and customs left to us by our ancestors from birth to further education, marriage and death.
Death, like birth, is one of the two most important events in a person's life, so there are many rituals and customs related to funerals. Although China is a vast country, with different languages and cultures, there are many similarities in funeral customs. For example, there are two major taboos for New Year's funerals in China.
In the traditional understanding of the ancients, there is"Treat death as life"It means that although a person is dead, he should take what happens after his death as if he was alive, and there should be no negligence. Therefore, although a person cannot be resurrected after death, various ceremonies are still performed after death, even more solemnly than after birth.
Before going out of the funeral, the first thing is for the deceased"Cleanse"、"Wear a shroud"The family of the deceased will then send out a funeral notice and wait for the relatives of the deceased to come to pay their respects. During this period, the relatives of the deceased also have to prepare a large amount"Spirit paper"It is burned in front of the grave, and the funeral is done for the adults and children in the family, and then the burial is beautiful.
Burial is not the end of the matter. Every year during the Chinese New Year or other important traditional festivals, the relatives of the deceased go to the grave to pay respects to their deceased relatives, and there are many instructions to prepare for the burial. Every year during the Spring Festival, it is a day for family reunions, and on this day, of course, the whole family goes to visit the grave together to comfort their deceased relatives.
However, there is one type of person who cannot go to the grave, that is, the woman who marries the family. If both parents die and the bride returns to her mother's home on Chinese New Year's Eve, in many places, the whole family has to go to the cemetery to pay respects, but the woman who returns to her mother's house cannot go, she can only stay at home quietly, which is the first taboo to go to the cemetery on Chinese New Year's Eve.
It is also very particular to bring things to the grave, and generally people will choose to bring them'Welcome sheet'Come to visit the New Year, now that the living conditions are better, the things for the New Year are also varied, but there is one thing that must not be brought, that is, things related to peach trees, whether it is peach branches or products made of peach branches, they cannot be brought to the graves of relatives. This is the second taboo on going to the grave of a loved one on New Year's Day.
Married girls should naturally be taboo when paying tribute to their deceased parents. Why can't married girls worship their parents on New Year's Day?This is mainly related to the age-old idea of patriarchy. There were old times"The water spilled by the married daughter"means that if you get married, you will no longer be in your mother's family.
Therefore, the bride in the old days rarely went back to her parents' home, and even if she did, her husband might not like it, which made her family feel very shameless and unlucky. In addition, after a woman gets married, everything goes to her husband's family, and even in some places, women marry with their husbands and are completely separated from their parents' families.
Because the girl who marries is not considered to be the mother's family, if the girl is gone, the New Year's grave will be misunderstood, because there is no son in the family, in the eyes of the Tujia family, no son is a symbol of serious blood, but it also means that the family is in the middle of the road, and there is not even a son, so what"Rich"？Therefore, the aborigines like to have sons, but this also exacerbates the social phenomenon of male superiority and inferiority.
If there is a son in the family and the daughter comes to sweep the grave, it means that the son in the family is unmarried, and the son is unmarried"Families are ruined"An important feature. For these two reasons, it is not advisable for the daughter to appear in front of the grave on the first day of the Lunar New Year, otherwise there will be"Breaking the family taboo"。
In a lot"Ghost hunting"In the film and television dramas, they did not abide by this taboo and family ethics, and the Taoist priest in charge of catching ghosts always used a sword made of peach wood, and the ghosts were very afraid. In the aboriginal worldview, the peach tree is a yang tree, just as willows, pines, etc. are shade trees.
After a person dies, whether he becomes a ghost or leaves a fragment of his soul, his traits are all negative, so ghosts will naturally get close to yin trees such as pine trees and willows, and fear yang trees such as peach trees. To this day, in many places, we can still see many elderly people choosing to sweep their graves under pine trees, and this is why.
From a practical point of view, why plant more pine and willow trees near the graves?It is said that if you plant peach trees and other fruiting trees near the tomb, many passers-by will pick peaches to quench their thirst and step on the tomb, which is a great disrespect to the ancestors, so in order to avoid this situation, most of the pine trees and willow trees planted do not bear fruit.
The ancients were very concerned about the influence of their ancestors' qi on their descendants, as we often say now"Ancestors bless", the ancestors will bless the descendants, but if the descendants bring the soul of a very unfavorable thing such as peach wood to the grave, it will break the anger of the ancestors, and how can they bless the descendants?And if the descendants bring something very unfavorable to the gods, such as peach wood, to the grave, it will interrupt the luck of the ancestors, and how can the ancestors bless the descendants?
This is what the Tujia people say"There are two taboos in the New Year"。If these two taboos are violated, the ancestors will be very dissatisfied with the performance of their children in the heavenly spirits, and they will no longer bless their children and grandchildren. Children will also see the family break up and lose its glory.
Married women are not allowed to return to the grave, as modern people become more and more open-minded, few people will care about this, and there are no longer a few daughters who go to the grave to their parents to pay New Year's greetings during the New Year, and there is no negative impact on the family, so she does not have to consciously abide by this tradition.
There are also many people who believe in the effectiveness of the mahogany sword, because people still use it to take away what they need at home, but from ancient times to the present, few people carry the mahogany sword and related finished products to the grave together. Going to the grave refers to the memory of the deceased relatives of the living, and the elderly will definitely be able to feel it as long as they pay attention.