New Year's story

Japanese New Year is currently celebrated on January 1st, with the holiday usually celebrated until January 3rd, while other sources state that segatsu lasts until January 6th. In 1873, five years after the Meiji Restoration, Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar. Until 1873, Japan used a lunar calendar in which twelve months consisted of 29 or 30 days, each of which totaled about 354 days. “The bright, colorful, cheerful New Year holiday of the Japanese has always attracted attention. Noting the diversity of New Year's customs and rituals of the Japanese, Russian diplomat Grigory de Vollan at the end of the 19th century. wrote: “Each province celebrates the New Year in its own way, and one could fill a whole book if one were to describe all the characteristic customs of the Japanese people” (Vollan, 1903, p. 176). Indeed, Japan has always been characterized by significant ethnographic diversity, an abundance of local customs and features in all areas of traditional life. This creates certain difficulties when studying any Japanese custom, since all-Japanese characteristics manifested themselves through many local variations. This also applies to New Year celebrations. However, we can assume that already at the end of the Edo era (1603-1868) and especially during the Meiji period (1868-1912), while maintaining local features, a pan-Japanese model of the New Year holiday developed based on the leveling of local rural customs. As for the latter, they are still very diverse in different regions of Japan" (Calendar customs and rituals of the peoples of East Asia. New Year, editors-in-chief: R. Sh. Dzharylgasinova, M. V. Kryukov, Moscow , Main Editorial Board of Oriental Literature of the Nauka Publishing House, 1985, p. 117).

Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival or Lunar New Year, is celebrated every year on the new moon of the first lunar month, around the beginning of spring (Lichun). The exact date may fall any time between January 21 and February 21 (inclusive) according to the Gregorian calendar. Traditionally, the year was marked by one of the twelve Earthly Branches, represented by animals, and one of the ten Heavenly Stems, which correspond to the five elements. This combination repeats every 60 years. This is the most important Chinese holiday of the year. In China, the New Year has been the main, truly national holiday since ancient times – the most solemn, the most joyful, the noisiest and longest. This is how he remains today. However, the external signs of this holiday do not fully reveal its exceptional significance in China. One of the most important, if not the most important, feature of traditional Chinese culture is the emphasis on the organic connection between man and the natural world. For the Chinese, the cycle of world time coincided with the cycle of the seasons, with the eternal cycle of the revival and death of nature. And the New Year marked for them a complete and general renewal of the world, to the point that a child born in the old year after celebrating the New Year was considered to have matured a year. The New Year in China opened a new page in life for everyone, instilling in everyone hope for new happiness. New Year's festivities were therefore not just a time of feasts, amusements and pleasant idleness so different from everyday life, which were expected and remembered the whole year. They reflected in one way or another all aspects of the culture and life of the Chinese – from religious beliefs and family life to economic activity. The custom of celebrating the New Year at the end of winter dates back to ancient times in China. However, the date of the New Year and the forms of festive rituals, of course, did not remain unchanged during the historical development of Chinese civilization. The archaic forms of celebrating the New Year were the Zha and La holidays, the origins of which are lost in the Neolithic cultures of the Yellow River Plain.