On the day before the Spring Festival, that is, on New Year's Eve, every household pastes couplets on both sides of the door. So why paste couplets for Spring Festival? In fact, paste couplets is also a relatively long folk tradition in China. Do you know the origin of paste couplets for Spring Festival?
The origin of affixing couplets
Spring Festival couplets, also known as couplets and door couplets, are written in red paper and pasted on the door with a festive and lively atmosphere. Spring Festival couplets should be pasted in the Spring Festival, which is related to the ancient "peach Charms" to exorcise ghosts and evil spirits. The ancients believed that the human disease was caused by ghosts because of their limited scientific and technological level. In order to resist their invasion during the Spring Festival, people hang the peach board with the function of avoiding evil on the side of the door. At the same time, people write the names of the God of the door tea and Yu Lei on the peach board (and some picture them). In this way, the evil spirits do not dare to come. These peach planks are called "peach runes". Later, they were replaced by red paper and became spring couplets with words written on them. Now, although people know that there are no ghosts to worship, they still keep the custom of sticking Spring Festival couplets to this day. It's just that the contents of Spring Festival couplets are more and more showing the concept of life in the new era.
The history of Spring Festival couplets
The custom of affixing spring couplets began about a thousand years ago in the post Shu period, as evidenced by history. In addition, according to the jade candle Scripture and Yanjing chronicle of the year, the original form of spring couplets is what people call "peach runes".
The origin of Spring Festival couplets should start with Taofu. It is said in ancient times that there are big peach trees in dushuo mountain in the East China Sea. Under the peach trees, there are two gods, Shentu and Yushe, who are in charge of ten thousand ghosts. In case of a sneaky ghost, they tie it up and feed it to the tiger. Later, in the Spring Festival, in order to avoid ghosts, the people drew these two gods on the mahogany board, which is the Taofu.
In the Five Dynasties, Meng Chang, the Lord of Shu, personally wrote a couplet on Taofu, which is generally regarded as the earliest spring couplet. In Song Dynasty, it has become a custom to paste couplets in Spring Festival. Wang Anshi wrote in his poem: 'thousands of families always exchange the new peach for the old one. 'writing spring couplets with red paper began in the Ming Dynasty.
In Ming Dynasty, Taofu was renamed "spring couplet". Chen yunzhan's Zan cloud tower miscellaneous talks in the Ming Dynasty said: 'the establishment of spring couplets started from the emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty. Jinling, the capital of the emperor, was suddenly announced before New Year's Eve that a couplet of Spring Festival should be added at the gate of Gongqing's scholar and commoner's house to show the emperor's Micro trip. '
The folk custom of pasting Spring Festival couplets began in Song Dynasty and became popular in Ming Dynasty. According to historical records, Zhu Yuanzhang, the emperor of Ming Dynasty, loved couplets very much. He not only wrote by himself, but also encouraged his subordinates to write. One new year's Eve, he announced: 'Gongqing scholar's family, a spring festival couplet must be added to the door. 'on the first day of the first day of the lunar new year, Taizu went on a tour in micro clothes and was very happy to see the Spring Festival couplets.
When he went to a family and saw that there was no spring festival couplet on the door, he asked why. It turns out that the owner is a pig killer. He is worried that no one can write Spring Festival couplets. Zhu Yuanzhang immediately wrote the spring couplet of "two hands split the road of life and death, one knife cut the root of right and wrong" and gave it to the family. It can be seen from this story that Zhu Yuanzhang's strong advocacy of Spring Festival couplets is precisely because of his strong advocacy, which promotes the popularity of Spring Festival couplets.
The meaning of Spring Festival couplets
If it has been 2000 years since the Qin and Han Dynasties, why do Chinese people have a special interest in pasting spring couplets? This involves the traditional thinking of Chinese people.
As the saying goes: 'spring is the plan of a year. 'since ancient times, the Chinese people have an optimistic concept of thinking, which is to hope for the future and hope that the future will bring them good luck. No matter in the past year, what is happy, what is satisfied, or what is not, we always hope to have a better year in the future, so when the Spring Festival is coming, pasting Spring Festival couplets is the best choice to achieve this goal.
With the help of Spring Festival couplets, they express their joy and happiness for the coming year, or their expectation and hope for the new year. In their traditional concept, it is the most pleasant and auspicious thing to have a good start in a year. Therefore, every Spring Festival, they express their good feelings and a good expectation for the future by pasting Spring Festival couplets.
At the same time, the Chinese people pay great attention to festivity, auspiciousness, bustle, good food, good drink, setting off firecrackers, visiting relatives and friends, etc., which are all the reflection of the festive psychology. The affixing of Spring Festival couplets is just an external means to strengthen people's festive psychology and exaggerate the atmosphere.