The winter solstice gathering activities first start with "Nine" (wine). Literati often invite relatives and friends to meet on a "Nine" day to have a drink with nine people ("wine" is a homophone for "Nine"). Nine dishes and nine bowls are used on the banquet. It means "nine-nine to eliminate cold".
The second step is to fill in the "Nine-Nine Cold-repelling Pictures". It is usually a piece of calligraphy with double hooks and red calligraphy, with nine characters on it, "Weeping willows in front of the courtyard, cherish the spring breeze", each character has nine strokes, and there are eighty-one strokes. Starting from the winter solstice, one stroke is filled in according to the order of strokes every day, and every nine strokes are filled in. In one word, until spring returns to the earth after the ninth nine, a picture of the ninth nine to relieve the cold will be considered complete. The color of the strokes filled in each day is determined by the weather of the day. If it is sunny, it will be red; if it is cloudy, it will be blue; if it rains, it will be green; if it is windy, it will be yellow; if it is snow, it will be white.
There are also many ways to fill in the nine-nine cold-relieving pictures. For example, draw nine branches of winter plum blossoms on white paper, each with nine blossoms, one branch corresponding to the number nine, and one branch corresponding to the day. Fill a plum blossom with a specific color every day according to the actual weather conditions. Yang Yunfu of the Yuan Dynasty recorded in "Miscellaneous Odes of Luanjing": "If you try to count the ninety-nine pictures in the window, the remaining cold will disappear and the warmth will return to the beginning. The plum blossoms are dotted with no white left, and you can see that today they are apricot trees."
The most elegant The "Nine-Nine Cold-repelling Picture" is a nine-body couplet. Each couplet has nine characters, each character has nine paintings. Each day, fill in one word in the upper and lower couplets. For example, the upper couplet reads "Spring springs weep and willows dye spring beauty"; the lower couplet reads "Autumn courtyard hangs autumn persimmons and autumn sends autumn fragrance", which is called Jiujiuxiao Winter couplets. However, no matter what kind of nine-nine anti-cold pictures, while killing time and entertaining the body and mind, they also simply record the weather changes. It is said that experienced old people can also predict the amount of rain and the abundance and abundance of the year based on the Nine-Nine Cold Elimination Diagram.
The gathering activities of literati formed a unique Winter Solstice culture, expanded the cultural connotation of Winter Solstice, and made this solar term in sharp contrast with other solar terms, making it even more memorable...< /p>