In Japan, many houses are decorated with pine branches and sacred straw ropes to celebrate the New Year. These decorations serve as ornaments to welcome the deity of luck into each home.
Typical old houses feature a Shinto altar where residents pray for peaceful lives. The altar is also adorned with a pair of pine branches and a sacred straw rope to invite the deity to reside there.
At the end of the New Year week, the pine branches and straw ropes from each area in the village are gathered to create a large torch. This torch is then lit and set ablaze to symbolically return these items to the heavens where the deities reside.
Using embers from the torch, people grill rice cakes and consume them with wishes for their family’s health.
コメント