Legends of Chinese Spring Festival
Post Time: Feb 12 2013 By
Sophie Huang
Why Chinese need to do “Shou Sui” in new year eve? How the Chinese lunar calendar build up? It is hard to say the exact emerging time of these customs, while here are some legends about these customs which may help you know more about this traditional Chinese celebration.
The legend of Spring Festival traditional activity - Shou Sui
Shou Sui refers to stay late or the whole night in the New Year eve and welcome the new year’s coming. There is a story of this custom in the folk.
In the ancient time, there was a brutal beast settled in the forest which was called "Nian” (means "year”). It was a carnivore eating not only animals but also human beings. People were extremely afraid of it. Gradually, people caught the activity regulation of Nian. It would like to catch human being every 365 days a time. And it always emerged after the sunset and back to the forest before the sunrise.
When handled this regulation, people made out a policy to prevent the coming of Nian. They would firstly clean all the house and enjoy the eve’s dinner. And then locked gates of yards. Because after dinner, it was hard to know whether they could survive or not so the dinner was prepared more like a banquet. Before dinner, the whole family needed to worship their ancestors for protection. After this big meal, no one was brave to have a deep sleep so they sit together to chat with each other for whole night. Gradually, this behavior became a custom and passed till now.
The legend of Chinese lunar calendar
It is said that in the ancient time, there was a man named “Wan Nian”. He found the disorder to calculate the farming working calendar, so he planned to finalize a fixed day as a sign to begin each seasonal farming work. He was occasionally to design a tool to memory the date according to the regulation movement of sun.
Wan Nian brought this tool to the emperor. The emperor was delighted when he get touch with this useful tool. The emperor supported Wan Nian to find the exact movement of the seasons on both financial and technique fields.
With many years researches, Wan Nian finally made out the original lunar calendar which was “a year has 4 seasons, a season has 3 months”. Wan Nian asked the emperor to offer a title to the beginning of the first day in each cycling. The emperor said “the spring is the first season of the nature, so the first day called Spring Festival”.
And the calendar designed by Wan Nian has passed till now as the China lunar calendar.
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