Beijing time on December 21 17:21,ushered in the Winter solstice solar term，which means cold winter is coming. On this day, although the sun is low and the days are short, the temperature is not the lowest . Because there is still “accumulated heat” on the surface, it is usually not very cold before the winter solstice, and the real cold comes after the winter solstice.
“Winter Solstice” has three meanings: first, when the cathode is at its peak, Yin Qi is at its peak; The second is the beginning of Yang Qi and the initiation of Yang qi; Three is the sun to the south, the most southern point of direct sunlight.
As the saying goes: The winter solstice is as big as the Spring Festival.Folk believe that the winter solstice is a auspicious day blessed by heaven, so they congratulate each other, feasts, beaming, and are more lively than the New Year.
One custom of Winter Solstice is to worship ancestors. Guangdong province, Chaoshan area people say: “Who haven’t return home on winter festival have no ancestors.” It means that people who go out to work to make money, in any case on the winter solstice need to return home and go to the grave to offer sacrifices to ancestors, otherwise there is no ancestral home concept.
Another custom is that bosses need to pay their employees for their work.That is to say, the winter solstice is as important as the New Year, and students and workers alike enjoy the holiday. In the past, as a domestic labourer, used to settle wages with the owners in the winter solstice festival, ready to go home. It is traditional for the owners to host a dinner for the staff and discuss the next year with each other.
The food custom is to eat dumplings.It is well known that people eat dumplings in the north and tangyuan in the south. The former takes Henan as an example, “pinch frozen ears” is the common name for eating dumplings in Henan during the winter solstice. According to legend, the Nanyang medical sage Zhang Zhongjing returned to his hometown when the snow was falling and the wind was biting. When he saw that the villagers were naked and many of their ears were frozen, he was very sad, so he asked his disciples to set up a medical shed, boil mutton, chili and some herbs to keep the cold out of the pot, remove them and chop them up, use dough bags to look like ears, put them in the pot and cook them, and then give them to the people. After taking the food, the villagers’ ears were cured. Later, during the winter solstice, people imitated and ate, which is why the custom of eating dumplings was formed, along with the saying “do not eat dumplings and lose ears”.
In addition to dumplings and glutinous rice balls, on the day of the winter solstice, the different kinds of food around the country, such as eating “Winter solstice meat”, is the ancient food custom that the “Zuo meat” is distributed by people in the ancestral halls of the same family after the winter solstice.So people will choose wonton worship winter, because “wonton shape like chicken eggs, like a chaotic scene of heaven and earth, so eat it on the winter solstice.”
Since the winter solstice, even into the “nine”, in the winter solstice folk have pasted the “nine-nine cold relief map” custom. The cold relief map is a “calendar” that records the weather after nine, and it is a very traditional and good-looking calendar. It has a total of 81 units, so it is called the “99 Cold Relief Map”. Counting from the winter solstice, taking nine days as a unit, and counting nine days consecutively, winter will be over after eighty-one days.
The plum blossom in “Painting nine” is more romantic and beautiful, called Sumei map. Is to draw a plain plum, on the branch painting plum blossom nine, each has nine petals, a total of eighty-one petals, or eighty one small plum, on behalf of “nine days” eighty-one day, every day with a red pen or black pen painted a petal or a petal, petals and ninety-nine out, nine out of spring, winter to spring. The dyed plain plum is not only very beautiful, but also like a well-conceived and unique plum blossom picture. In ancient times, officials in the winter solstice after the end of the court, worship each other will also be plum “99 cold relief map” to each other.
At the end of the year, I wish you all the best in the coming days.
Post time: Dec-23-2024