Who's naughty, Who's nice?? -- 送sòng神shén Lunar date: December 24th (February 7th, 2010)

Who's naughty, Who's nice?? -- 送sòng神shén
Lunar date: December 24th (February 7th, 2010)


When talking about the Winter Festival, I mentioned that the gods on earth would return to the "royal court" in heaven to report the year's work.  Knowing us Chinese that pretty much ceremonial-ize just about everything, the sending gods 'home for the holidays' is definitely not getting passed by so carelessly.
The gods return home mainly to report to the holy emperor玉yù皇húan大dà帝dì (the king of the gods) what the family they are in charge of has been doing for the past year.  How many good and bad deeds were done by the family members in the past year would be reported in detail.  Based on the deeds done, which is similar to Santa's list (Santa Claus), the gods then determine the fate and fortune of the family for the coming year(s).  This is much more serious than a gift or a lump of coal - it may be a matter of life or death.  Naturally, on the day when gods return to heaven, the family would prepare a feast and make the offerings in order to please the gods into saying nice things about the family, and to bring a good fortunate for the year to come.
The offering customarily begins at 子tsĭ时shí, which is 0:00am (the beginning of lunar December 24th).  The offering food normally includes 三sän牲shëng, which are cooked chicken, port, and fish; accompanied by sweetened food group such as sweetened rice ball汤täng圆yúan, fruits, candies; in addition to the ceremonial candles and incenses.  The sweets are very important as the Chinese believe that the sweets would get the gods to 'sweet talk' about the things the family did during the past years.  A more interesting belief is that the Chinese use the sweetened rice ball to 'glue' the mouths of the gods so the gods could not speak ill (or to speak at all) of them.  After the praying and making offering, some people will also offer 纸zhĭ钱qíen (paper money) with similar purpose of the offering of sweets.  The whole ceremony will be wrapped up with igniting the firecrackers.  Using the festival noise, seeing the gods off back to heaven.
When the god are off to their annual report, the Chinese will then begin the preparation of the New Year celebration, starting with cleaning the house, getting the entire household clean and fresh for the coming of the New Year.
Note that for those households the suffer from unfortunate lost of family members, the ceremony and the cleaning ritual are prohibited as the Chinese believe that such households are 'unclean' to perform such rituals.  Normally such households shall wait three years (the traditional mourning period for the deceased) before resuming the usual practices, but nowadays one year is sufficient.
Somehow I think the farmers are much more busier than their usual field works.  But that just me thinking out loud.

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