Wax Platform in Memory

When I was young, I didn't know why this December was called the December of the New Year. I even thought it must be related to lighting candles on the table of ancestor's offering during the New Year. Nowadays, although we have already understood that this wax is not the same wax, we can not help but think of candles when referring to the month of December, and then think of the candlesticks that once placed candles.

In the days when there were no electric lights in the countryside, cotton oil lamps and kerosene lamps were usually used to illuminate the family at night; lighting candles was considered a bright and luxurious thing. Because the head of a candle can't be controlled as small as a bean by human beings as an oil lamp, it consumes very fast, and ordinary people can't light a candle at all. Therefore, it is only during the New Year that two red candles are lit on the incense case for the ancestors invited home to enjoy themselves, so that the souls of the deceased who have been asleep for a long time can share this precious light with the people.

Even in the old days when people were not rich, the candlesticks were very particular. The best wax tables in large families are silver. Most of the wax tables in ordinary families are copper or cast with fusible metals such as lead and tin. However, regardless of the quality of the wax table, the shape of the wax table is much the same. It is like a suona on the desktop, but there is another round "tear bowl" in the middle. In the past, the traditional wax making technology could not keep the burning candle from "tears" (wax oil), so the circular "tear bowl" installed in the middle of the wax table has two functions of decoration and wax oil.

I remember that the high wax table in my family is lead, which is my mother's dowry, and it is used only on New Year's Day. On the evening of New Year's Eve, when it was not too dark, the candlestick placed on the table was inserted by Grandpa and ignited by wiping the foreign fire with his own hands. As a result, candlelight flickered, cigarettes curled, and the family tree drawing axis hanging on the wall above the table with the ancestors'names and taboos became more mysterious and solemn. This is the Spring Festival.

In 1958, under the "Three Red Flags" of the General Line, the Great Leap Forward of the People and the People's Commune, all metal products, including cooking pots, doors and noses, door handles and locks of cabinets, were collected as "patriotic" items in order to raise the accounts of "Marshal of Iron and Steel". The bold grandpa secretly smashed the wax tables that had been used in our family for many years and turned them into the net feet of his fishing net. (From this, I remember that our wax tables were made of lead.) So for many years afterwards, there was no wax table at home. During the Spring Festival, candles were either glued to the bottom of a buckled bowl with wax oil, or a Chinese cabbage knot was inserted into a sharpened chopstick as a wax table. Later, during the "Cultural Revolution" period, the Chinese New Year was revolutionary, and even activities such as inviting God and offering money were criticized as "sealing capital" so wax tables were useless.

Nowadays, all the customs of the Spring Festival have mostly restored their original appearance; inviting God, saluting New Year's Day, burning incense, kowtowing and so on have become the contents of the "New Year Culture". Although there were bright lights in the halls where the ancestors were worshipped, red candles still lit on the tables. But the indispensable wax table is no longer the traditional look, many people are replaced by empty beer bottles; the old father has always been more fastidious, although it is also wine bottles, but not those ordinary beer bottles, but with a blue and white ceramics bottle CAIFED made wax table.