New Year's Eve

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Updated: 2011-05-27

     

New Year's Eve is also called the Night of the 29th or 30th, when everlasting lamps shall be lit in the hall until the 4th of January of the next year after receiving the Kitchen God.

After the worshipping of the Kitchen God (the 23rd of the 12th lunar month), depending on the financial conditions, each household will make stocking arrangements for the new year, and relatives will exchange gifts. Those away from home will go home one by one, and a day will be chosen to salute God with prepared offerings, commonly known as "Yearly."

On New Year's Eve, dinner includes rice wine, red-marinated pork and cooked glutinous rice, which is used for celebrating the family reunion and wishing for a sweeter life in the coming year. After the New Year’s Eve dinner, the Shou Sui starts, and children will surround and sit in front of the auditorium or stove to hear adults tell stories. Until about 11 o'clock, the whole family will eat a small bowl of snacks. Then parents give lucky money to their children, also hammer one or two nails into the wall, which marks that the family will grow in the next year. Housewives will cook food for the first day of the New Year, demonstrating that the family will have more than needed every year.

New Year's Eve is the time when debt must be paid off. The old customs say that an old debt shall not pass into the New Year, and that debts needn’t be paid after the cock crows and after January. Therefore, the poor in each village will leave their homes, avoiding creditors and returning after the cock’s crow. As an old saying puts it, it is more difficult to live through the New Year than passing by a pass.