The custom of celebrating the Spring Festival in Hainan

The custom of celebrating the New Year in Hainan is roughly similar to that in the mainland. There are customs such as picking houses to send the poor, offering sacrifices to ancestors, lighting kerosene lamps, and not sweeping the floor on the first day of the New Year. Couplets will be posted on the 3th of the New Year, incense will be burned and firecrackers will be set off at dawn on the first day of the New Year, and rice cakes and dumplings will be set up in the ancestral hall, and doors will be opened to welcome the New Year.

Sacrificing ancestors is the first important event on New Year's Eve in Hainan, and it is also a major custom in the local New Year. Generally speaking, there is a fixed auspicious time.

In Hainan, it is necessary to adopt houses to send the poor before New Year's Eve, which means cleaning the house with brooms tied with bamboo branches and leaves, and setting fire to worn-out clothes to send them to the poor, and then waiting for the New Year.

There is a saying in Hainan that "the anvil must not be idle for thirty nights". In the past, no matter how poor people were, they borrowed money and rice on the 3 th of the twelfth lunar month to kill chickens and ducks and sacrifice their ancestors. People didn't begin to enjoy the New Year's Eve dinner until our ancestors had eaten it.

On New Year's Eve in Hainan, most people will light kerosene lamps indoors, day and night, for several days until dawn, commonly known as "lighting lanterns", which means "adding to the wealth".