There is only one person in the Hori family now, and Katsugoro and Hayato were sent back to Kamiishihara Village by him. Zhixiu thinks that no matter how good the care is, it can't compare to family affection, children's psychology is a very complicated thing, don't straighten others everywhere, and as a result, the two students went crooked, isn't that a big joke?

In addition to the traditional New Year, the shogunate also established five major legal holidays, which were the Nanakusa Festival (the seventh day of the first month), the Hina Matsuri (Kamiha, Daughter's Festival), the Calamus Festival (Boys' Day), the Tanabata Festival, and the Chrysanthemum Festival, but no matter how you count it, the New Year is the most important festival of the year.

Naohide gave Toranosuke and Gakujiro a holiday, and asked them to inform the children in the neighborhood to come back to Horiya after the Nanakusa Festival to take the Rangaku lesson.

Celebrating the festival alone, my heart is empty, but Xuejiro's sister Yingzi brings a group of children over to help every day, and soon her mood improves. said it was helping, but in fact, only Yingzi was busy with business, and the other children came to play. The heads of each family have to visit around after serving the public, the ladies take the older children to prepare for the festival, and the jujube house does not let the children go, only Zhixiu is the most popular with children, there are delicious food, there are fun, and the brother of Zhixiu is so gentle, never say that they are noisy.

At this time, the preparation for the New Year begins with cleaning the dust. At this time, the houses were all wooden structures, there were no chimneys, and the stove in the kitchen burned charcoal, which caused a lot of dust to accumulate on the high parts of the house, and the only way to reap the blessings of the new year was to clean the entire house.

"Dust removal" - cleaning the dust starts on the thirteenth day of the wax month, which is the ghost of the twenty-eight constellations, and it is the day when everything is good, so everyone in Fusang starts to clean the dust on this day.

Later generations called the New Year's cleaning "breaking away", which was much more elegant than "removing the dust". Never buy, don't charge unwanted things, give up the useless things piled up at home, and give up the obsession with material things, let yourself be in a spacious, comfortable and free space. Does it have anything to do with dusting? But that's what later generations called New Year's cleaning, and there was no one left.

Horike Houseshiki's hanging dust was cleaned up by Hanako's mother and Eiko who took the time to help clean it, and it started before Naohide returned, which is why Naohide, Toranosuke, and Gakujiro came back to meet them. Even when Naoxiu came back, he basically didn't help much, and Yingzi cleaned up before and after, left and right.

From the twentieth month to the end of the year, it is the twilight of the year, during this time, everyone gives gifts to each other, congratulates each other on spending the year peacefully, and Naoxiu is busy visiting as soon as he comes back, and it will be rude to visit again.

Busy and busy, finally it was time to happily beat the rice cakes. In previous years, everyone bought rice cakes, but this year, each family had a good income, and when they became interested, they agreed to make rice cakes together.

Hitting rice cakes is a hard work, before the jujube house has stopped on the 20th, the young people of the neighborhood are gathered in the jujube house to play rice cakes, Naoxiu is tall, casual shopping was also arrested laborers, at the end of the day, the wooden stick does not know how many times to lift, both arms are swollen. But Yingzi took the initiative to join a group with him and was responsible for turning the rice cake balls, and Naoxiu couldn't complain in person, so he had to rub his arms secretly when he returned home.

The business of the jujube house has been let go, and now it is mainly Hanako's mother and Yingzi, and the four heads of the family - Taro Takemae, Nakamura Shoichi, Kojima Shigeru, and Nakajima Kuro are in charge of the town, and each family has received more than 30 small judgments in a year, and each family is very satisfied with it. Because each family usually has a boy or a male servant to participate in the internal work, and now it is also used to doing things with the Zaoya Group as the center.

It's easy to do things when there are too many people, Naoxiu only participated in the rice cake hunt for one day and then found an excuse to run away, and the rest of the rice cakes were made by the boys in the neighborhood, and the rice cakes made looked quite good and there were quite a lot of them.

Zhixiu bought a lot of small gifts for the teenagers who beat the rice cakes, and both sides felt that it was a good deal - because of the large number of teenagers, in fact, after the distribution, the rice cakes were not very tiring, and the competition for who made the rice cakes was fast, good and interesting, and the task was completed. In addition, the small gifts given by Zhixiu are very exquisite, and you can show off to other friends during the New Year, which is really an unexpected joy.

Naohide swept the graves of his parents and elders before the New Year, sorted out the surrounding sundries, and offered tribute. Speaking of which,It's been three years since Naoxiu arrived here.,At the beginning, I only regarded myself as a passerby.,As time goes by,The memories of the two lives are entangled.,The increase in emotional bonds.,It turned out that I couldn't tell which side was Zhuangsheng's dream.,But now the attitude is "working hard in the present is the right way.。

After that, Yingzi took a group of children to continue to help Naoxiu hang the "New Year ornament" and clean the Buddhist altar.

The New Year's ornament is the blessing decoration before the New Year, and the hanging time generally lasts from the thirteenth day of the wax moon to the New Year. New Year's decorations are burned during the first three days of the new year when you go to a temple or shrine for the first time, or on the 15th day of the first month to ward off illness and disaster.

Regardless of rich or poor, the New Year's ornament must have the "Three Treasures of the New Year" - door pine, note rope (しめ縄) and mirror cake, other New Year's ornaments also have broken magic arrows, cake flowers and so on.

The god of the year in Fuso is the "god of Suitoku" and usually lives in the mountains. Therefore, on the New Year's Day, a pine branch is set up in front of the house or a pine branch is hung on the door in order to invite the god of Suide to live.

The "Rope of Prayer" is a kind of ritual used by Shinto to make an enchantment, woven from a stem and topped with a paper pendant, and the New Year's Rope is a symbol of the gods who will protect the house. "Jewel ornaments" are hung on the door pine, entrance entrance, and mirror cake, and the details of the decoration vary according to local customs.

The three artifacts of Fuso are the Heavenly Cong Cloud Sword (Kusanagi Sword), the Eight-Foot Qiong Hook Jade, and the Eight Mirrors.

Fuso folk believe that "rice cakes" are sacred foods dedicated to the gods, and the round shape refers to the eight mirrors, so the round rice cakes are called "mirror cakes". Usually the decoration of the mirror cake also refers to the orange of the eight-foot Qiong Hook jade, and the string of persimmons that refers to the Tiancong Cloud Sword, so as to form the "three artifacts" and bless the safety of the family.

The mirror cake is generally placed on top of each other, expressing the meaning of "yin and yang" and "sun and moon", which is a symbol of auspiciousness. You can also continue to add auspicious foods such as chestnuts and 50,000 rice. In later generations, when people's lives became richer, there were also those who visited three overlapping mirror cakes, and there were also those who shouted the slogan that the more the better, and the number of mirror cakes was no longer limited to two groups.

Tradition holds that the 28th day of the wax moon is the most suitable time to place the mirror cakes, and the location should be placed in the depths of the house equivalent to the "upper seat" away from the entrance, and the craftsmen generally prefer to place them in the places where they work, and the merchants tend to place them in the important places in the shops. And people usually put a small mirror cake in the kitchen to keep away from fire and disease.

Naohide bought a lot of materials from the commercial town, took the children to make Kamatsu, Zhulian Rope, Demon Arrow, etc., and encouraged them to send New Year's ornaments everywhere, and the neighbors accepted it with a smile, and gave the children happy money, and everyone had a good time.

Fuso believes that deceased relatives live in the sacred realm of the earth, the "sacred hedge", and in the spring and autumn "other shore" (spring and autumn equinoxes and the three days before and after), they can meet their deceased relatives by sweeping the tombs, and on Obon, ancestors return home to reunite with their families.

In normal times, you can communicate with your deceased relatives by enshrined on a plaque (tablet) on a Buddhist altar (shrine) at home, and you can receive protection and blessings through offerings and offerings to them.

Fuso believes that people become Buddhas after death, so they enshrine the plaque on the altar, and in ordinary families, there are only the tablets of relatives on the altar and there is no traditional Buddha statue.

With the help of Yingzi, Naoxiu tidied up the Buddhist altar at home, offered flowers, incense, tribute and water, and muttered prayers, hoping that everything would be fine for his deceased relatives and bless himself and his relatives and friends safely.

The next step is to prepare for the "Imperial Festival" (New Year's Dinner). In the first three days of the new year, he could not make a fire to cook, firstly, because the god of Suide came to the earth, so that the fireworks in the world could not disturb him, and secondly, to let the god of the stove rest. Therefore, every household has to prepare the New Year's dinner and the royal festival.

The festival is enshrined on the last day of the year, the Great Day, and it is only after the New Year that the whole family eats the "scraps from the gods".

Traditionally, the festival is placed in a five-tiered food box, but it is said that the poor have only two or three layers of the food box.

From top to bottom, the first layer is "Zhu い cuisine", which are all small dishes with auspicious meanings, such as fish roe with the meaning of having many children and blessings, dried fish that symbolizes a good harvest of grains, black beans that represent diligence and health, and red and white fish cakes that are indispensable, red symbolizes festivity, and white represents sacredness; In addition, there are Date Makaki, which symbolizes the accumulation of knowledge, chestnut dango with the names "Katsukuri" and "Golden Ball", manna with the words "Elder Ki" or "Senshiro Raki", and Nishitamako, which symbolizes gold and silver.

The second layer is yakiti (barbecue), which is mainly seafood, including long shrimp, which means that you can live until you bend your waist like a shrimp, sea bream, which is pronounced "good luck", and yellowtail, which represents the prosperity of people.

The third floor is filled with "酢の物" (vinegar mixed vegetables) and "和え物" (cold salads).

Vinegar-stained shredded radish (紅白なます) with festive colors, chrysanthemum turnips representing good luck, and chestnut stains with the meaning of successful career and abundant grains

Because the fifth layer of the lowest layer is used to hold the happiness sought from the god of the year, the god of the year, so it is empty, and the last layer containing the food is the first and layer, which is renamed the first and the first layer because four is the same as "death".

The first layer is dominated by "boiled food", and the food in the cooked food is closely connected, symbolizing family harmony and unity. Among them, there are porous lotus roots, which are "foresight of the future and foresight", calla lily, burdock root, etc., kelp, which sounds like "happiness", and water chestnuts, which represent achievement.

It was too troublesome to make the imperial festival dishes, and Naoxiu became impatient after a while, and Yingzi immediately took over. In fact, Yingzi also thinks it's quite strange: Fuso machismo has a long history, most men don't go into the kitchen, and it's very rare to go into the kitchen like Naoxiu. But a man with the ability to enter the kitchen is gentle, and a man without the ability to enter the kitchen is not manly, Yingzi thinks in her heart that the Nakamura family and the neighbors are rich by Naohide, so she is very grateful to Naoxiu, how to look at Naohide how pleasing to the eye, she thinks Naohide cooks is really handsome!

Naoxiu felt embarrassed, so he prepared some more dishes for the New Year, preparing to show off his skills after the New Year.