The New Year Festival, also known as the Kitchen God Festival, is a festival to worship the Kitchen God in most parts of the north.
Kitchen God is one of the "Six Family Gods" in folk beliefs (the six family gods are Kitchen God, Door God, Household God, Well God, Land God and Ce Shen respectively), in which Kitchen God is in charge of the kitchen fire diet of every household. On the day of annual kitchen god sacrifice (off-year), Kitchen God will report the good and evil things done by responsible families like Jade Emperor, so people are extremely interested in Kitchen God.
There are many legends about the origin of off-year, and one version is the most popular. According to legend, the Kitchen God turned out to be a rich boy named Zhang Dan, who once married a virtuous woman, Guo Dingxiang. Later, Zhang Dan went out to earn a living, and his wife Lilac worked hard at home, waiting for him to return. But when Zhang came home, he changed his mind, married a beautiful woman, Li, and drove Guo Dingxiang out of the house. Li was lazy by nature, and soon squandered the property of the Zhang family and remarried others. Zhang Dan's family was ruined, caught in a sea of fire and became a beggar. One day, he went to a family to beg, and the host gave him hot soup and rice. Later, he found that it was his abandoned wife Guo Dingxiang who delivered the meal. He was ashamed and put out the stove. Later, God felt sorry for his suicide and made him a kitchen god.
About the custom of off-year
First, honeydew melon sacrifices to the stove
Every year, Kitchen God gives a small report on the crimes committed by this family in one year. Those who commit major crimes will lose 300 days of their lives, and those who commit minor crimes will lose 3 days.
Just ask if you are afraid!
So people have honeydew melons to sacrifice to the stove, and your kitchen god loves to tell tales, so I will paste sugar into your mouth! I won't let you talk nonsense! After all, you ate my mouth short, didn't you? This is also a primitive sacrifice to the kitchen god.
Melons are sticky and sweet, which means that the kitchen god should say more good things and less bad things. With the development and progress of the times, the ritual of offering sacrifices to stoves gradually disappeared, but eating honeydew melons remained, and honeydew melons tasted sweet.
Second, clean the dust.
Dust removal is actually a necessary preparation before the Chinese New Year. China New Year symbolizes the farewell of the old and the welcome of the new. From childhood to New Year's Eve, it is called "Dust Cleaning Day" or "Spring Festival Day", that is, year-end cleaning at home. Every household will tear down the bedding, wash it and dry it, clean all kinds of utensils, sweep away the dust and sort out the unwanted things together. In addition to cleaning up for the Spring Festival, cleaning up the dust in the off-year also has a very important significance, which represents resigning the old and welcoming the new, uprooting the ominous, sweeping away all the bad things in the past year, leaving room for new blessings and wealth, adding blessings and auspiciousness to the new year, and letting the whole family live a harmonious and beautiful life.
Third, eat jiaozi.
Off-year is also the day when the kitchen god goes to heaven. It is said that the Kitchen God likes to report beating people when he returns to heaven after spending a year on earth, so he asked Wang to seal his mouth with the Kitchen God's candy that day and eat jiaozi, a festive member, with the whole family.
Jiaozi is used to eating it in the northern New Year's Eve, which means to bid farewell to Kitchen God and "send away the windward side of jiaozi". When offering sacrifices, jiaozi should be placed on the platform. In addition, there is a folk saying "delicious but not as good as jiaozi". During the Spring Festival, jiaozi has become an indispensable food.