▪️Chinese New Year: the history of the holiday
In China, the New Year holiday is associated with an ancient legend. A horned monster named Nian, which means "year" in translation, or Nian shou (New Year's beast) came to the village every year and destroyed all food supplies, also ate livestock and people, especially small children. People on this day went to the mountains and left food in front of the threshold. And this continued until a wise man appeared in the village, who told the villagers that the monster was afraid of red color and loud sounds. According to another version, when the monster once again appeared "for a visit", he was accidentally driven away by a loudly crying boy in a red robe.
However, over time, Nian stopped threatening people at all, because the Taoist sage Hongjun-laozu defeated him and sent him to the bottom of the sea.
Noise and red color have become a fundamental tradition in the celebration of the New Year in China. The holiday is loud and fun: people wear red clothes and set off fireworks. It is believed that the more fun you spend the New Year holidays, the happier the whole year will be.
▪️Chinese New Year Traditions
Be sure to carry out a general cleaning and get rid of old and unnecessary things. And do so by January 31st.
It is important to decorate the house and red paper garlands, red Chinese lanterns and tangerine pyramids are best suited for this.
Clothing is also very important. It should be clean, new and preferably red. But if the scarlet total look is still not too easy to pick up, then at least it’s worth adding a few red details to the outfit.
It is customary to give red envelopes with money. Moreover, the number of banknotes must be even.
As it is already clear - New Year is a family holiday. But it is not easy to gather a large family at one table, so long weekends come in handy here, the traditions of which have been painted since time immemorial.
📍on the first day of the New Year they visit grandparents;
📍in the second - honor the ancestors. For this they visit temples;
📍on the third and fourth days, the son-in-law must visit his wife's parents. He should bring gifts and wish happiness, health and wealth;
📍on the fifth day, according to an old Chinese legend, the god of prosperity was
born, so everyone prepares dumplings for the table;
And all subsequent days are devoted to visiting guests. Everyone goes to visit friends, relatives and acquaintances. And these visits are always accompanied by feasts.
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