been superbly busy with spring cleaning over the last couple of weeks in preparation for the lunar new year. and tomorrow is 立春, or the official start of spring. it is also considered the
minor new year for the year of the snake and coincides with the day where traditionally, the chinese people would send off their household gods or kitchen gods to heaven (送神).
and talking about 送神, my family used to do it when i was much younger. and sending off the gods would be an important affair with mum setting up the home's altar and making offerings of fruits and
kueh bakul (traditional chinese cake made of caramelized sugar). the belief is that by offering such sugary cakes to the household gods before they depart, they would say good things about the family when they report to the celestial god in heaven. the other explanation was that becos the caramelized sugar is sticky, the mouth of the household gods would be all sticky and they could not say too much bad things. quite funny right? i can imagine how busy and crowded heaven would be cos suddenly there will be a boom and overcrowding in heaven with all the household gods visiting. ok, better not spew such nonsense.
anyway, back to spring cleaning. most of us would symbolically finish all major cleaning by tomorrow once we send of the household gods. and i say "symbolically" cos, like it or not, with
a dog in the house, the whole place will be dirty like crazy if i were to stop cleaning the house, even for a day! as for me, i have also gone further to clean off all my facebook posts.
heh heh...
so, in view of 立春, here's my wish for one and all...
祝各位新春快乐，身体安康，心想事成!
picture of kitchen god from http://www.cultural-china.com/chinaWH/html/en/Traditions1048bye1298.html,
picture of kueh bakul from http://www.audreycooks.com/audreycooks/photos/2007/02/ti-kueh1.jpg
2 comments:
Happy Spring! Amused that you are still keeping am eye on these old observances...
haha dazza,
i only practice those that i think are useful and meaningful to me... no blind following at all. let me explain.
i do spring cleaning cos (1) it gives me an excuse to go into the full details of cleaning, something that i usually do not do (eg clearing out my cabinets and cleaning the interior, clearing old things and discarding them from my store room etc, and more importantly, (2) spring cleaning occurs after the wet december/ january and it is a good time to get things out, cleaned, arranged and dry them or else things will get mouldy from all the wet/ damp months.
although i do not identify myself as a taoist, i do respect and observe the sending of the kitchen gods cos (1) my mother still believes in it and (2) my ancestral tablets and the family deities are in my brother's house and he observe taoists practices. so, my partaking of such practices is to maintain and keep the peace and cordial family relations esp between my brother and i.
:-)
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