New Year’s Eve is one of the most important festivals in the Chinese area. On this day, families scattered all over the country return home to have New Year’s Eve dinner together around the fire and enjoy family happiness. At first glance, it seems like a very happy holiday, but do fans know that New Year’s Eve is actually the day before the end of the world? This starts with the story of the lantern monkey spread among Taiwanese folk.

In the past, when lighting equipment was not so developed, almost every household used “oil lamps” for lighting. “Everything has a god.” Because the lamp stand looks like a monkey, people thought that the lamp holder was inhabited by a monkey. A god called “Lamp Monkey” will perform “pay consumption” every winter solstice to thank all the gods in the family for their blessings.

But one year during the winter solstice, for some reason all the people in Taiwan forgot to pay money to the Lantern Monkey. Seeing that other gods had glutinous rice balls to enjoy, the Lantern Monkey felt that he was being squeezed out and frustrated. He obviously worked hard to bring light to his family. But he was not thanked, so when the Lantern Monkey sent God off back to heaven, he told the Jade Emperor that Taiwanese people were ungrateful and wasteful. After hearing this, the Jade Emperor decided to let Taiwan be thanked at the end of the year (New Year’s Eve). Great floods.

After other gods heard the Jade Emperor God’s instructions, they hurriedly entrusted dreams to the Taiwanese people. As the Jade Emperor God is the god in charge of heaven, the Taiwanese people really had no way to resist and could not resist. So on New Year’s Eve, relatives who were away from home returned home. At home, I prepare to spend the last night with my family, not daring to sleep, and perform the last ancestor worship and the last fire ceremony. In addition, everyone was afraid that there would be no money to use in another world the next day, so they distributed the money at home equally among family members. This story has also become the custom of worshiping ancestors, eating reunion dinner, giving out red envelopes, and staying up late on New Year’s Eve.

But how could the gods be willing to let the Taiwanese people be wiped out like this? Therefore, the gods continued to plead with the Jade Emperor God. Finally, the Jade Emperor God couldn’t bear it and decided not to flood Taiwan. In the end, the people of Taiwan survived on the first day of the first lunar month, and people ecstatically said “congratulations” to each other.

The above is the story and legend of the lantern monkey spread on Taiwan’s New Year’s Eve. It not only reminds us to pay attention to the gods when worshiping, but also reflects the love and care of the Taiwanese people by the gods. Of course, our folk culture has a diverse side, and the stories about New Year’s Eve circulated in different places are also different.