Legend of Spring Festival
The Spring Festival is the most important and biggest festival in China. To
the Chinese people it is as important as Christmas to people in the West. It is
the first day of the lunar calendar and usually occurs somewhere between January
30 and February 20, heralding the beginning of spring, thus it is known as
Spring Festival. This traditional festival is also a festival of reunion, thus
no matter how far away people are from their home, they would try their best to
get back home to have the Reunion Dinner.
The Chinese meaning of this festival is Guo Nian. Guo means pass over and
Nian means year. The origin of the Chinese New Year Festival can be traced back
thousands of years through a continually evolving series of colorful legends and
traditions. According to one of the most famous legends, in ancient China there
lived a monster named Year who, with a horn on the head, was extremely
ferocious. Year lived deep at the bottom of the sea all the year round and
climbed up to the shore only on New Year's Eve to devour the cattle and kill
people's lives.
Thereupon on the day of every New Year's Eve people from all villages would
flee, bringing along the old and the young, to the remote mountains so as to
avoid the calamity caused by the monster of Year.
On the day of that New Year's Eve the people of Peach Blossom village were
bringing along the old and the young to take flight when there came from outside
the village an old beggar. With a stick in his hand and a bag hanging upon his
arm, he had eyes twinkling like stars and graceful beard as white as silver.
Seized with panic, the villagers were in a great hurry to run away. Some were
closing the windows and locking the doors, some were packing, and others were
urging the cattle and driving the sheep. At a time when the people were shouting
and the horses were neighing no one was in the mood to care for the beggar.
Only a grandmother living in the east end of the village gave the old man
some food and advised him to flee to the mountains to avoid the Year monster.
But the old man stroked his beard and said with a smile, "If you allow me to
stay at your home for the night, I'm sure to drive away the monster Year."
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