Little New Year (Chinese: Xiaonian), usually a week before the lunar New Year, falls on Jan 17 this year. It is also known as the Festival of the Kitchen God, the deity who oversees the moral character of each household.
Here are six things you should know about the Little New Year, another sign of the start of spring.
Offer sacrifices to Kitchen God
In 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 by to the home through the pasting of a new paper image of him beside the stove. From this vantage point, the Kitchen God will oversee and protect the household for another year.
The offerings to the Kitchen God include pig's head, fish, sweet bean paste, melons, fruit, boiled dumplings, barley sugar, and Guandong candy.
House cleaning
Between Laba Festival, on the eighth day of the last lunar month, and Little New Year, on the twenty-third day, families throughout China undertake a thorough house cleaning, sweeping out the old in preparation for the New Year.
Eat Guandong candy
Guandong candy, a sticky treat made out of glutinous millet and sprouted wheat, is a traditional snack that Chinese people eat on the Festival of the Kitchen God.
Paste paper-cuts to windows
In the Little New Year, old couplets and paper-cuts from the previous Spring Festival are taken down, and new window decorations, New Year's posters, and auspicious decorations are pasted up.
Bath and hair-cut
As the old Chinese saying goes, whether they're rich or poor, people often have a haircut before the Spring Festival. The activity of taking bath and haircut is often taken on the Little New Year.
Preparations for Spring Festival
People start to stock up necessary provisions for the Spring Festival since the Little New Year. Everything needed to make offerings to the ancestors, entertain guests, and feed the family over the long holiday must be purchased in advance.
A Spring Festival shopping list includes items such as meat, poultry and eggs, fruit and vegetables, rice and flour, cigarettes, alcohol, sugar, and tea, red paper, images of celestial horses and the Kitchen God. Incense and candles, snacks, new calendars, and toys must also be purchased. Not to be forgotten are new clothes for children and firecrackers to welcome in the New Year.