CHAPTER VIII
THE END OF THE YEAR
The holidays begin ten days before the end of the year, so that everybody may have time to prepare for this great solemnity. For in China there are no legal holidays, and busy people only get a rest during the three great feasts of the Dragon, the Moon, and the change of the Year. There are five days holiday during each of the first two feasts, and thirty days during the last.
It is on these dates that bills usually fall due, and when they must be paid.
The last feast that we have spoken about includes several religious ceremonies. These consist in offering banquets to each one of the gods in thanksgiving for the good things he has accorded during the year that has passed. On the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth moon a touching ceremony is performed in the richest and the poorest houses alike. It is that of the adieu addressed to the household god and the reception given to the new-comer. It appears that this god only holds his tutelary office during one year, and has then to make place for a successor.
The altar of this god is always placed in the kitchen; candles are lighted before him every day, and incense is burned. At night a night-lamp, which is called the fire of long life, burns before his altar.
On the evening of the twenty-fourth, a grand dinner, with cakes of the most varied descriptions, and fruits of every sort, is spread out before this altar for the guests to partake of.
After having poured out the wine of libation and let off the crackers, without which no fête is complete in China, oats and corn are thrown on the roof of the house for the horses of the god to feed upon, and it is at that moment that he is supposed to take his departure.
The table is then cleared, and a fresh repast is laid out before the altar for the refreshment and welcome of the new-comer. His name is at once inscribed in the place of that of his predecessor, or it is the images of himself and his wife that are placed in the stead of those of the gods of the previous year.
This is our Christmas Day, after a fashion. It is this day that the children look forward to, in the expectation of fruits and sweets.