Origin of the small year
"Xiao Nian" is not small, but it has a big background.
The date of the small year is not uniform, in the Song Dynasty and before, the festival has a strict class division, the twenty-third day of the lunar month is generally the small year celebrated by the official family, and the people can only postpone the small year by one day to the twenty-fourth day of the lunar month, so in some poems of the Song Dynasty, the folk New Year recorded are all in the twenty-fourth lunar month, such as Fan Chengda's "Sacrificial Stove Poem" wrote: "The twenty-fourth of the ancient lunar month, the stove king wants to talk about things. The cloud car wind horse is small and stays, and the family has a cup and plate ceremony. ”
Folk customs
Sweep the dust
"Sweeping" is the year-end cleaning.
Every household has to clean the environment on this day, clean up all kinds of utensils, dismantle and wash the bedding and curtains, sprinkle and sweep the courtyard of Liulu, brush the dust and dirt cobwebs, and dredge the nullah and culverts.
Sweeping dust is to remove the old and welcome the new, and to remove the ominous.
Sacrificial stove
The duty of the god of the stove is to take charge of the fire and manage the food. The sacrificial stove has a history of thousands of years in Chinese folk, and the belief in the god of the stove is a reflection of the dream pursuit of the people of our country for "having more food and clothing".
Eat stove sugar
Popular in the northern region, as the saying goes, "twenty-three, sugar melon sticky", when the New Year is young, people will buy sugar melon, Kanto sugar, hemp sugar and so on. It is used to pray that the mouth of the king of the stove is sweeter, and God will say good things.
Cut the window grille
Cutting window flowers is a popular folk activity in small years, and the content of window flowers has a variety of animal and plant allusions, such as magpies climbing plums, swallows wearing peach willows, fish every year, mandarin ducks playing in the water, etc. Everyone pasted these cut window grilles on the windows, and the neighbors watched each other to see who had good craftsmanship, which was very New Year's atmosphere.
Returning home for reunion, wine knows the taste of the year.