Nostalgia is a special human emotion, especially during the holidays. For example, every Spring Festival, there are always people who sigh that "the taste of the New Year is light". It seems that only the Spring Festival when I was a child is the most festive.
So where did the taste of the New Year come from when I was a child? Before the last century, in that era of everything with tickets, people's lives were tight, food stamps were required for meals, meat stamps for meat, and cloth stamps for clothes. After a long year of material hardship, the Chinese New Year has become one of the few luxurious moments full of infinite longing.
During that time, only during the Spring Festival, you could enjoy the new clothes that your parents bought for you; Only during the Spring Festival can you eat the long-awaited "big meal" that you don't often eat on weekdays, and you can also go to other people's homes to "beg" the neighbor's delicious food. Cakes, peanuts, melon seeds, candy, these are the usual foods at the time, but they were luxuries at the time.
In a sense, the taste of the past year is based on the daily "sense of scarcity" and carries the unique mark of the times.
After the reform and opening up, the lives of the common people have become richer and richer. Nowadays, shopping malls and supermarkets are open all year round, so there is no need to go to great lengths to stock up on New Year's goods; New clothes are put on early, and there is no need to "delay gratification" until the first day of the new year; Foods all over the country, take-out and online shopping are done, and there are rarely any rare delicacies that are "eaten only during the New Year".
When the hearty Chinese New Year's Eve dinner and the joy of buying new clothes have long become daily, material abundance has blurred the face of "New Year's Flavor".
However, there is always a sense of ritual in life. After the complaint of "the taste of the New Year is light" has become commonplace, the New Year has become a fashion again. It's just that the way is different. The post-90s and post-00s, who gradually grasped the "right to speak during the Spring Festival", arranged various "New Year's customs" and "New Year's flavors" clearly.
Some people buy hair dye online early to dye themselves a "good color"; Some people fill their app favorites with Chinese New Year's Eve recipes, ready to go home and show their skills; Some people carefully put on New Year's nail art, New Year's makeup, New Year's screensaver, and blessing bracelets, focusing on a "New Year's New Atmosphere"; Some people haven't bought their own new clothes, but they have changed their pets into "New Year's robes" ......
The Spring Festival couplets are not satisfied with the traditional basic model, and the handwritten Spring Festival couplets composed of various homophonies, patterns, and letters have come into being, and some people are even ready to use scratch to send red envelopes.
Some young people who have been working non-stop have also created a "cyber game" for the traditional Spring Festival: reproducing the characteristic temple fairs of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in the VR virtual world; Prepare a vlog with a sense of science and technology to send remote New Year's greetings to the elders; The more capable ones have used the AI relative simulator to rehearse the foolish literature, nonsense literature, and crazy literature they have learned in a year to deal with the soul torture of the seven aunts and eight aunts.
Although everyone said that "there is no New Year's flavor", they are all using their own ways to restore the appearance of "New Year" in their memory, and use practical actions to salvage the lost New Year's flavor.
In fact, for thousands of years, the way the Spring Festival appears has also changed and changed, and many ancient customs have also been constantly introduced in the rolling torrent.
Take Spring Festival couplets as an example. According to legend, the Spring Festival couplets were originally "peach charms", written with peach wood, to ward off evil spirits and pray for blessings, and the peach charms are matched with the door gods, which is intended to guard the family house and keep safe, just like what is written in the poem: "Thousands of households will always replace the new peach with the old one." In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the word "Spring Festival couplets" was born. This custom slowly took shape and became popular under the promotion of the Ming emperors.
There is a more recent example, before the concept of Chinese New Year stalls, "watching movies" was not a mandatory choice for many people during the Spring Festival, due to the popularity of television, many theaters were closed before and after the Spring Festival; And now, watching movies has become one of the mainstream choices for Spring Festival family carnivals, and the total box office of Spring Festival movies in 2023 will reach 675.8 billion yuan, accounting for 12% of the total box office of the year.
Even in the same era, between different regions, the carrier of New Year's flavor is different.
In Guangdong, the colorful and grand New Year's flower market symbolizes the good luck of the New Year; In Sichuan, sitting around "rubbing mahjong" is an indispensable entertainment for the New Year; In the Northeast, preparing frozen goods and New Year's dishes is the prelude to the New Year for every household.
The form of the Spring Festival, like a river, with the changes of the times and regions, sometimes turbulent, sometimes quiet, but throughout the ages, people's intentions in it have always been the same.
As the writer Feng Jicai said, "All good food, good clothes, fun and good ideas must be put on the New Year." ”
Chinese love and value the New Year, not only because it is the grandest festival, but also because this time brings together every touch, care and blessing of ordinary life.
During the Chinese New Year, we can see: the grandmother who is cooking, staggering over to hug her grandson before she has time to put on her slippers; A mother who was at work, heard her daughter's voice, and stretched out her hand to hug her while running out; took charge of himself outside, and after returning home, he became a wanderer ...... the juniors in the family
It is true that some customs are disappearing, some are gradually changing, and some new scenes are gradually becoming fashionable. However, what flows under the so-called taste of the year is always the delicate and long-lasting human touch of the Chinese. The New Year is a matter of affection.
As long as the affection is strong, the flavor of the New Year will not fade. Do you think that's the reason?
The Year of the Dragon has arrived, and I wish my friends a prosperous Year of the Dragon!
The original title was "Is the New Year's Flavor Really Weak?" Written by Yang Rui **CCTV).