Why do we set off firecrackers during the Spring Festival?

Why do we set off firecrackers during the Spring Festival?
The Spring Festival is an ancient festival in my country and also the most important festival of the year. Setting off firecrackers is a very important custom during the Spring Festival with a long history. So why do we set off firecrackers during the Spring Festival? The Spring Festival is an important traditional festival of ours. If you want to know more about the Spring Festival, please come and check out the 2018 Spring Festival special feature on the Fortune Teller website! Setting off firecrackers is a traditional Chinese custom with a history of more than 2,000 years. According to legend, it was used to drive away a monster called Nian. When the clock strikes midnight, the New Year's bell rings and the sound of firecrackers shakes the sky over the entire Chinese land. At the "Three Yuan" moment of "the beginning of the year, the beginning of the month, and the beginning of the hour", some places still build "strong fires" in the courtyard to show that the energy is strong and the economy is prosperous.
Around the blazing fire, the children set off firecrackers and jumped around with joy! At this time, the house was brightly lit, there were brilliant sparks in the courtyard, and there were deafening noises outside the house, pushing the lively atmosphere of New Year's Eve to its climax. The sounds of firecrackers embody the Chinese working people's beautiful wishes to ward off evil, avoid disasters and pray for blessings. In the early Tang Dynasty, some people put saltpeter into bamboo tubes and set them off. This was the earliest prototype of saltpeter firecrackers. Later, when gunpowder appeared, people filled saltpeter, sulfur, charcoal, etc. into bamboo tubes and burned them, creating "firecrackers". In the Tang Dynasty, firecrackers were called "baodans". In Lai Hu's "Early Spring Poem", there is a line "The new calendar has just begun to unfold half a page, and the small courtyard is already filled with ashes from exploding poles." The "exploding poles" in this sentence refer to "firecrackers."
In the Song Dynasty, people began to commonly use paper tubes and hemp stems to wrap gunpowder and weave them into strings to make "woven cannons" (i.e. firecrackers). Regarding the evolution of firecrackers, "Tongsu Bian Paiyou" records: "In ancient times, firecrackers were made of real bamboo and set on fire, so Tang people also called it "explosive pole" in poetry. Later people made it by rolling paper and called it "firecrackers".
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, there were more types of firecrackers, and the time for setting off firecrackers was no longer limited to the early morning of the first day of the Lunar New Year. It began on New Year's Eve and reached a climax at midnight, commonly known as "welcoming the gods." At that time, everyone would set off firecrackers regardless of their status. Li Jiarui's "A Collection of Beiping Customs" quoted "Hu Tianlu" and said: "The capital is densely populated, the most densely populated in the world. Rich families buy thousands of firecrackers and burn them all. Even if poor families have difficulty making a living and want to pay their prime minister, they must set off a few firecrackers and burn a stick of incense to get rid of the trivialities of the previous year and predict the prosperity of the coming year. This custom has been passed down from generation to generation." In the Qing Dynasty, Xie Wenqiao's "New Year's Lyrics of the Church" said: "The sound of firecrackers is heard all night long, and fireworks have always flourished in the capital. Precious torches and silver flowers are blaring in the middle of the night, and singing and music are playing in the six streets." This reflects the scene of setting off firecrackers in Beijing at that time.

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