Minor Spring Festival (Chinese: Xiaonian), usually a week before the lunar New Year. There are many famous activities and customs during this time such as sweeping dust, offering sacrifice to the God of the Kitchen, writing couplets, cutting window paper and so on.
Offering Sacrifice to the God of Kitchen
One of the most distinctive traditions of the Little New Year is the burning of a paper image of the Kitchen God, dispatching the god’s spirit to Heaven to report on the family’s conduct over the past year. The Kitchen God is then welcomed back to the home through the pasting of a new paper image of him beside the stove.
Sweeping Dust
During this time, it’s only a few days until the Spring Festival. So every family will clean their rooms, which is called sweeping dust. It is believed that evil things can be swept away by doing this.
Cutting Window Paper
Among all the preparation activities for the new year, cutting window paper is the most popular one. The content of the window paper includes animals, plants and famous folk stories.
Bathing and Cutting Hair
Both adults and children need to bath and cut their hair at this time. One of the old saying goes, with or without money, cutting hair to celebrate the new year.
Eat sugar
Eating kitchen sugar popular in northern areas, on this day, people will buy tanggua, guandong sugar, sesame sugar and other offerings, pray for the kitchen God sweet mouth, saying good things for people.
Post time: Jan-24-2022