By Xiao Fang
Source: Guangming Online, January 23, 2024
The Spring Festival is the most important traditional festival of the Chinese nation, occupying a significant position in the history of Chinese civilization. For Chinese people, celebrating the New Year is not only marking the "year of time" that bids farewell to the old and ushers in the new, but also the "year of culture" filled with profound affection and moral values. Traditional festivals represented by the Spring Festival carry rich cultural connotations and values, condense the cultural blood and ideological essence of the Chinese nation, and accumulate the national spirit and family-country feelings. Today, as we firmly advance cultural confidence and self-improvement, Spring Festival folk customs have become an important carrier for consolidating social foundations, building a harmonious society, and inheriting Chinese culture.
In ancient times, the Spring Festival was known as Sui Shou (the first day of the year) or Yuan Dan (New Year's Day). Its emergence was directly linked to the formation of the ancient calendar system. The ancient Chinese took astronomical phenomena and phenology as important references for time changes, and the concept of the annual time cycle was already mastered by people before the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties.
The practice of designating the first day of the first lunar month as the New Year began in the first year of the Taichu reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (104 BC). For more than 2,000 years since then, although the calendar has been revised continuously, the date of the first lunar month as the start of the year has remained unchanged, and the festival customs have been passed down. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the first day of the year was called Yuan Zheng, Yuan Ri, or Yuan Hui. In the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Spring Festival was referred to as Yuan Ri, Sui Ri, or Yuan Zheng. Starting from the Tang Dynasty, the Spring Festival became a statutory public holiday. The Jia Ning Ling (Decree on Holidays and Leave) issued during the Kaiyuan reign of the Tang Dynasty granted seven days off for Yuan Ri (New Year's Day) and Winter Solstice respectively. On every Yuan Ri, the imperial court held a regular morning court ceremony to celebrate the New Year. Among the people, families gathered on Yuan Ri to feast and celebrate. In the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the Spring Festival was called Yuan Ri, Yuan Dan, or Xin Nian (New Year). The imperial court ceremony on Zheng Dan (the first day of the first lunar month) remained an important ritual for the royal family and a key part of the country's time-based politics.
Centered on bidding farewell to the old, welcoming the new, praying for blessings, and family reunion, the Spring Festival mainly consists of three parts: seeing off the old year, having the New Year's Eve dinner and staying up late, and welcoming the New Year. Its major folk customs include offering sacrifices to the Kitchen God, house cleaning, welcoming ancestral spirits, preparing festival food, haircutting and bathing, decorating doors and courtyards with Spring Festival couplets, New Year paintings and paper-cuts, wearing new clothes, the New Year's Eve family dinner, lucky money, staying up on New Year's Eve, setting off firecrackers to welcome the New Year, welcoming the God of Wealth, paying New Year calls, climbing high on the Seventh Day of the First Lunar Month, enjoying lanterns on the Lantern Festival, and extending New Year greetings. The colorful Spring Festival customs are full of the beauty of ethics, emotion, art and wisdom.
The festival rituals and customs, driven by the awareness of time renewal and based on the harmonious family-country feelings, form the backbone of Spring Festival traditions. Humanistic care and life consciousness are integrated into the vivid festival customs, connecting nature and society, family and country into an organic whole through the interaction of Spring Festival rituals.
From the history and ritual culture of the Spring Festival, we deeply appreciate its profound and inherited cultural values. The Spring Festival is a gathering of national spirit and emotions. The Spring Festival travel rush, involving hundreds of millions of people, is a unique cultural phenomenon in modern society, which fully reflects the immense emotional power carried by the Spring Festival. We return to our hometowns and families, gain emotional nourishment and plan for the future through family reunions and New Year greetings during the Spring Festival. Looking back, we experience the development and progress of the nation and families, and cultivate deeper family-country feelings in the Spring Festival culture. Such a festive atmosphere and emotion are of great practical significance to the stability and harmony of the country and society.
The Spring Festival is a concentrated and important embodiment of fine traditional Chinese culture, offering a window into "historical China". Through various festival rituals, the Spring Festival creates an auspicious atmosphere. In the rituals of seeing off the old year, family reunion and New Year calls, people express respect for ancestors, heaven and nature, and love for family members, neighbors, teachers, friends and peers. This realizes the integration and unity of families, communities and society, and also enhances the cultural identity of overseas Chinese. The gentle and kind Spring Festival reveals the inherent harmonious nature of Chinese culture.
The Spring Festival culture also profoundly embodies the natural ethical value of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. The Chinese people awe by the laws of nature and believe that human life rhythms are in sync with seasonal cycles. Spring is a season when all things revive and life force grows. Through Spring Festival folk activities and spring-welcoming ceremonies, people inspire vitality. As a new year begins and everything takes on a new look, the Spring Festival, with its rich ecological ethical connotations between humans and nature, is highly compatible with the concept of sustainable development in modern society, making the ideas of respecting, treating well, being grateful for, complying with and protecting nature deeply rooted in people's hearts.
The Spring Festival is also an important moment for uniting the emotions and beliefs of Chinese people worldwide. Globally, about one-fifth of the population celebrates the Spring Festival in various forms. Various New Year customs have become an important spiritual bond connecting Chinese people at home and abroad. The Spring Festival has become a common cultural symbol for all Chinese people worldwide. It not only provides opportunities for gatherings and entertainment, but also creates a cultural window for cultivating a sense of roots for Chinese people scattered around the globe. The Spring Festival New Year makes the feeling of "all under heaven are one family" more profound and vivid for Chinese people worldwide.
With the growing influence of Chinese culture, the Spring Festival has become a global festival symbol and a worldwide celebration crossing geographical and cultural boundaries. Some countries and regions such as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore have long designated the Spring Festival (Lunar New Year) as a statutory public holiday. On December 22, 2023, the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution by consensus, designating the Lunar New Year as a United Nations holiday. In addition, the application for the Spring Festival to be inscribed on the intangible cultural heritage list has been put on the agenda. One important reason is that the Spring Festival contains universal values of human civilization such as family harmony, social inclusiveness, and harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, and has outstanding value in strengthening historical ethics, family ethics and natural ethics.
"Joyfully celebrating the transition from the old year to the new, we welcome and send off the year in one night." From the ritual culture of the Spring Festival, we can see the natural ethics connecting heaven and earth, the historical ethics of respecting ancestors, the family ethics of mutual love, the social ethics of New Year greetings and celebrations, as well as the Chinese people's awareness of time renewal and aspirations for harvest and peace. In the era of globalization, the Spring Festival celebrations and folk customs of China have made important contributions to showcasing the rich spiritual heritage of the Chinese nation to the world.
This article was originally published in Guangming Daily (January 23, 2024, Page 4) and organized by Liu Bingya, reporter of Guangming Online.