"Twenty-eight, steamed jujube flowers; Twenty-nine, go and drink; Chinese New Year's Eve, fabricated nose (dumplings); In the first year of college, he pouted his ass and messed around. "At this moment, countless of you have either arrived home safely, or are running on the way home. No matter how far you and I go, we will always remember the direction of home.
Every Spring Festival, another word that appears as frequently as "going home" is "New Year's flavor". The discussion about whether the flavor of the New Year has faded seems to have become a kind of "ritual" of the Spring Festival, where we spend the New Year in search of the New Year's flavor while feeling nostalgic and lamenting the dissipation of the strong flavor of the past.
Is the taste of the New Year really weak? This issue does not seem to need to be discussed. Anyone can come up with a variety of illustrations. For example, the scenes rich in life such as "steaming jujube flowers" and "playing wine" have long been gone, and have been replaced by "one-stop" procurement of New Year's goods such as supermarkets and e-commerce platforms. Not to mention the more local rituals such as "setting the stove" and "worshipping ancestors", even the "low threshold" New Year's greeting relatives have "evolved" into WeChat red envelopes and ** messages. Sitting together as a family and watching the Spring Festival Gala while enjoying the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is the childhood memory of many post-80s, but the reality is that many families' Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is a restaurant table **, TV has long been withdrawn from the living room "stage", and children and grandchildren have their own mobile phones to find fun on the Internet.
In the impression and understanding of many people, the taste of the New Year is the local flavor, the taste of reunion, the kind of tiptoeing anticipation, and the kind of warmth that snuggles up to each other.
Yes, there are fewer banquets for four generations in the same house, and more reunion dinners for maybe only three people; Food has become abundant and accessible, and the opportunity and expectation of waiting until the Chinese New Year to eat some kind of scarce delicacy has also decreased; In the process of urbanization, a large family will have residential differentiation, and the diluted kinship will also make people feel that the emotional concentration of the New Year has decreased; As household services become smaller and more abundant in goods and services, the "busy year" is a smaller and smaller part ......of what everyone can participate inIn this way, the "New Year's flavor" is indeed getting weaker and weaker.
Under the nostalgic filter, people give more warmth and romantic imagination to the customs of the past. But any kind of custom grows on a certain economic basis and social soil. Once the soil changes, the folklore is bound to change with it. A Western philosopher said, "Tradition is not just a housekeeper, but simply the faithful preservation of what it has received, and then it is maintained and passed on to future generations without change." Therefore, there is no need to be too sentimental about those who have become "out of fashion". For those customs that have the flavor of the New Year around you, please don't ignore and miss them.
Pre-made dishes have quietly entered the menu of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, and those foods with beautiful meanings are still there, such as "fish every year", and food is used as a symbol to convey blessings and expectations of happiness and beauty "on time". The museum has entered the program schedule for the Spring Festival holiday, and nail art, eyelash art, and hairdressing have become the "new three-piece suit" for many girls to celebrate the New Year, and under the new social and cultural background, people have created a new New Year's "ritual" to "wake up" the excitement and festivity. Maybe what accompanies you is only the intimate relationship established based on interest, learning, etc., rather than kinship, or even the "cloud" companionship of watching ** works or playing a game together, but I believe you will still experience the kind of gifts and sharing between people in this new cultural field. The flavor of the year is being integrated into a new life. In other words, the new life is immersed in the flavor of the New Year.
The face of "New Year's Flavor" may be constantly changing, but what remains unchanged is that we still accumulate our feelings, wishes and beliefs on this festival as the years go by. For individuals, the Spring Festival still means saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new, seeking good fortune and avoiding evil, hope and reunion; For the country and the nation, the Spring Festival is still a cultural symbol of unity and yearning for prosperity. "New Year's flavor" has always been there
*: Commentator of Guangming.com.
*:Xinhua.
Editor-in-charge: Zhang Yongqun.
Editor: Sun Dai.