The general secretary pointed out that the Spring Festival is a beautiful time to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new, and it will always bring people new expectations. The Chinese civilization has a long history, which has nurtured the precious spiritual character of the Chinese nation and cultivated the pursuit of the Chinese people. The Spring Festival is an important opportunity to inherit and carry forward the excellent traditional Chinese culture, and has an important position in the history of Chinese civilization. In the traditional sense, the Spring Festival is based on the end of the year, and the core content is to remove the old and welcome the new. It is the Spring Festival couplets, New Year's paintings, firecrackers, dragon lanterns, lion dances, reunion dinners, New Year's greetings, temple fairs, social fires, New Year's money, New Year's gifts and other New Year's customs that create the atmosphere of the Spring Festival and make the New Year more "New Year's flavor". In the face of tradition and modernity, we should be more in awe, use our body and mind to get close to the tradition, and feel and appreciate the warmth of the Spring Festival folk customs.
The Spring Festival is ancient, but full of freshness and vitality. The ancients used astronomy, phenology, and personnel activities as important references for time changes, and the concept of the time cycle of the year should have been grasped by people three generations ago. "Erya Shitian": "Xia said the year, Shang said the ritual, Zhou said the year, Tang Yu said." The Tang Yu era was probably the late Neolithic period, when the year was called "carry", which means carrying, indicating the operation and change of time; The Xia Dynasty called the year "year", which was associated with harvest, sacrifice, and astronomical stars. The year is the time standard of the agricultural society, reflecting the rhythm of life of the ancients. The sacrifices and celebrations that follow the harvest naturally become the landmarks of the annual cycle. The traditional large-scale New Year's sacrifice ceremony is often held in the winter and spring at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, which is the original origin of the Spring Festival. At this time, although the Spring Festival has not yet appeared as an official name, the meaning of its New Year's Festival has already been formed.
During the Qin and Han dynasties, Chinese society gradually broke away from the influence of early primitive religious beliefs, people's concept of the year underwent a fundamental change, the time habit of following the natural moon order gradually changed, and the coordination of festivals and social life attracted attention. As the Spring Festival of the first year, the social significance is obvious after the Qin and Han dynasties, the imperial court will take the first year as an opportunity to show and strengthen the righteousness of the monarch and ministers, and the folk as a good day for family gatherings in the township. From the Qin Dynasty to the middle of the Han Dynasty, the first year of the year was in the tenth month of the summer calendar, and the first day of October was the new year. After the middle of the Han Dynasty, the first year of the year is on the first day of the first month, which is called the first month of the first month, the first day of the first month, the first day of the year, and so on. The first lunar day was an important celebration day for the royal family in the Han Dynasty, and the imperial court held a large-scale court meeting. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the first year of the dynasty is still a ceremony of the imperial court, and in the folk, people in the Yuan Dynasty rose up with roosters, first set off firecrackers in front of the courtyard, "to dispel the evil ghosts of the mountains", and then the family was dressed neatly, and worshiped the elders in turn. Since the Tang Dynasty, the Spring Festival has enjoyed the first statutory holiday, giving seven days off, including the first day and three days before and after. The imperial court held the early dynasty ceremony as usual, and the people reunited with their families and held banquets to celebrate. In the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the Spring Festival was called the first day or New Year's Day and New Year's Day. The Zhengdan ceremony is still an important ceremony for the royal family. As a state ceremony, the emperor's Zhengdan Dynasty will be a grand and spectacular scene, and it is an important part of the country's time politics. The grand celebration shows the peace of the country internally and the national prestige of China externally.
The Spring Festival is lively, the crisp firecrackers, the red Spring Festival couplets, the festive New Year's paintings, the churning dragon dance, all show the full spring, all the troubles and bad luck are left in the old years, people in the new years to pursue new hope. The Spring Festival is not only the condensation point of national feelings, but also a colorful and moving cultural landscape. From the people's affectionate New Year's wishes, I was moved by the endless life consciousness of the ancient nation. Today, when China is moving towards the world, only by maintaining this cultural characteristic can we add color to the world culture. The Spring Festival is a festival for family reunions, and returning home during the Spring Festival strengthens the ethical relationship of the family and enhances the feelings between relatives. The Spring Festival has adjusted and rebuilt people's social relations. There will be some positive interactions between the owner and the staff, the store and the customer, the temple and the donor, in the process of saying goodbye to the old year and welcoming the new year. This is not only a continuation of traditional customs, but also the consensus of modern society.
Returning home for the Chinese New Year has many practical and edifying implications. Going home for the New Year is a common saying and a cultural directive, as the saying goes, "If you don't rush for a year, you will catch up with Chinese New Year's Eve." Returning home is not only a reunion of loved ones, but also a journey of spiritual renewal. In today's highly technological, materialistic and personalized society and the resulting high degree of social differentiation, we especially need the traditional festival as a specific national time to hold festival ceremonies with rich connotations and vivid forms, so as to enhance the cultural identity of the nation, enhance the national emotion, and stimulate the vitality of the nation. From the perspective of alleviating social psychological difficulties, harmonizing social relations, boosting the national spirit, and confirming the future direction of national culture, we will promote the return of good etiquette and customs.
In the process of reviving the ritual of the New Year, we should not only pay attention to the connotation of etiquette, but also pay attention to the behavior of etiquette, and the two complement each other. Connotation is the foundation, without connotation form will not last, without form connotation can not be expressed. Etiquette is a whole, both etiquette behavior, but also the spirit of etiquette and people's hearts, only to achieve the form and connotation of each other, in order to achieve the real revival of the New Year's ritual tradition. Values are very important, and the physical memory of ritual behaviors should not be missing, and only through the memory and activities of the body can the effective inheritance of culture be realized. Nowadays, mobile phones and the Internet are very good, which greatly expands the scope of geographical and social space for New Year's greetings, but they are still not as real as face-to-face New Year's greetings.
After all, contemporary society has changed, and how the traditional customs adapt to the new environment, which ones are to be inherited and which ones are to be updated, which need to be analyzed. However, we must not have misunderstandings of concepts, and we must not think that what is "new" is good and what is "old" is bad. "The old is also new", some old things can also serve the new life, so you can't blindly like the new and hate the old. While revering the tradition, we must bring forth the new, of course, not to tear down the old and create new things, but to deduce new elements from the old things for today's social life.
Most of the traditional festival rituals emphasize family reunion, and the family is shrinking in today's society, but the meaning and function of the family should continue to be emphasized. If the family declines, the national culture is in danger of losing the foundation of inheritance, because the family and the country are a cultural whole, and the two promote and enhance each other. At the same time, the scope of social interaction is becoming more and more extensive, and the establishment of public social relations is becoming more and more important. In the New Year's rituals, the family and the community should be equally important, especially in urban life, the construction of community culture should be emphasized, so that everyone can get a sense of home and happiness in the urban community.
The word "year" in the oracle bone inscription is the appearance of a person carrying a he. The picture shows the carved bones of the Shang Dynasty in the collection of the National Museum of China, which is engraved with the word "Receiving the Year", which means that the harvest of the New Year Valley.The general secretary pointed out that etiquette is an effective way to declare values and educate the people. As a system norm and value carrier, etiquette has the function of educating people. China is a big country with a long history of etiquette and music, rich etiquette and cultural resources, and attaches great importance to the construction of etiquette system and the education of etiquette. "Humanities" here is a ritual culture that respects heaven and earth, embodies ethnic ethics and political and religious ethics, and contains the core of etiquette and righteousness. "Ritual intercourse" is not only a life rule, but also a living habit. In the traditional society, etiquette culture has become a way for people to cultivate, from military affairs to food and daily life are all polite, as the "Book of Rites and Rituals" said, three hundred rituals, three thousand rituals. Etiquette culture regulates and serves the daily life of Chinese, laying the cultural foundation of etiquette China.
After entering the modern society, the social structure has undergone major changes, people's production and lifestyle have gone beyond the scope of families and villages, interpersonal relations have also undergone major changes, and the tradition of human affection and etiquette tends to fade with the acceleration of urbanization and the change of rural governance methods. We regain a sense of home in urban residential areas through a modern transformation of the ritual traditions of everyday life, such as community gatherings during the Spring Festival and mutual care among neighbors. The festival provides a time-space platform for people to return to tradition, and people recognize, enjoy and inherit the tradition in the festival etiquette, and the tradition also uses the festival etiquette to adjust and update itself. During the Spring Festival, go home for reunions, worship ancestors, strengthen family ethics and emotional traditions, and visit neighbors to enhance community unity. Since the pre-Qin period, the far-reaching national etiquette system, the coexistence of the "five rites" of auspiciousness, fierceness, guest, military and jia, not only regulates the behavior and emotions of individuals at important moments in the life of the country and society, but also has a huge effect on national identity. In the field of major national political life, advocating traditional elegance and customs, advocating morality and honesty during the Spring Festival, and inheriting and carrying forward the excellent traditional Chinese culture can effectively demonstrate social and political ethics, gather people's hearts, and promote the construction of a clean culture in the new era.
The creative transformation and innovative development of China's excellent traditional culture contain the logic of the evolution of human civilization. The reconstruction and renewal of etiquette ethics through creative transformation and innovative development is an important part of the construction of spiritual civilization and cultural power in the new era. The activation and utilization of traditional etiquette resources has a positive role in promoting the cultivation of family and country feelings, the improvement of social civilization, the enhancement of national cohesion, the education of civic morality and the cultivation of new ethical personality. Some cultural events have multiple meanings in traditional societies, and for contemporary times, we may need to expand and innovate our understanding of the meaning of the original secondary level that is needed in our current lives. For example, the part of the traditional festival that is close to nature, we today from the perspective of ecological civilization to enhance and emphasize, the Spring Festival worship heaven and earth, thank nature for giving us space and resources for survival, the Spring Festival ceremony conforms to the natural solar terms, full of people's expectations for the harvest year, and eat reunion dinner to be diligent and thrifty as the new fashion. We should take ecological ethics and culture as the basis for the innovative development of future festivals, and understand the harmonious coexistence of man and nature. Historically, it is in this kind of creative transformation and innovative development that Chinese culture has gained permanent vitality.
This article was published in the 03rd issue of China Discipline Inspection and Supervision magazine in 2024, and the author: Xiao Fang, director and professor of the Department of Anthropology and Folklore of Beijing Normal University, and vice president of the 9th China Folklore Society).