The Spring Festival is the most important traditional festival in China. No matter how far away from home, the Chinese always try their best to go back home for the family reunion dinner on the Lunar New Year Eve and the ensuing gatherings and mutual visits. This is a custom that has lasted for thousands of years.

In recent years, however, people have a growing feeling that the once strong festive atmosphere of the Spring Festival is ebbing. It is not only that many traditional programs are on the wane but also the sentimental bonds among families and friends. Some feel the Spring Festival is no long so dear.

So the question is, has the festive atmosphere really become diluted? Is this a positive or a negative phenomenon? What has caused this change? What can be done to retain the good parts of the festival?

The essence remains

Su Bin (People's Daily): How traditional festivals are celebrated keeps changing in history. While the essence is handed down year after year, new eras add new content to the celebrations.

Since the last decade, more and more people have begun to talk about the changed festive atmosphere of the Spring Festival. However, we still find that the essence of family reunion and festive jubilation has remained the same. What has changed are the ways the festival is celebrated, and also the individuals themselves.

In the past, during the Spring Festival, families made dumplings, cleaned the house together, and wrote Spring Festival couplets. Children visited their neighbors to say hello hoping for snacks and the traditional red envelopes containing money.

Today, however, a growing number of families are choosing to have the family reunion dinner in restaurants. House cleaning is outsourced to professional companies and the Spring Festival couplets are bought on the market. Even the red envelopes are not real envelopes, but e-envelopes sent by WeChat. The new forms of the Spring Festival celebrations have resulted due to the times changing and will continue to evolve.

In the past, children and adults alike awaited the arrival of the Spring Festival because only during this most important festival could they enjoy good food and new clothes. At that time, the red packets with lucky money were a very good income for children, although they contained just small sums of money.

However, when the young generation grew up, their roles began to change. In the past, they were the ones who received the red envelopes. Today, it is they who gift the envelopes to the new young generation. In the past, they used to go home to join their parents for the holiday, but today, probably their parents come to their cities for the festival.

This traditional festival will continue and affect everyone growing up in the Chinese culture. The changing times will add more new forms and content to this ancient festival and contribute to its prosperity.

Mo Kaiwei (baijiahao.baidu.com): From a positive prospect, the changed Spring Festival atmosphere shows the progress made with the times. Two decades ago or even earlier, pork used to be a rarity. People hoped to eat better food during the Spring Festival and children pinned their hope on the red envelopes for getting some money. However, these days, they don't have to depend on the Spring Festival for these goodies. People can afford to eat meat and even better food round the year.

Also, some traditional rituals that harmed the environment, such as setting off fireworks, have been banned in cities. This too can be said to be changing the atmosphere of the Spring Festival. Actually, banning fireworks to protect the environment is good for people's health. Other ways of celebration like lighting lanterns and performing lion dances are also going out of favor in today's modern society.

With the festive atmosphere changing, the Spring Festival may increasingly become no different from other festivals or holidays. Worse, after some decades or centuries, the future generations might abandon the Spring Festival, replacing it with foreign festivals. By then the whole Chinese culture would have taken a huge hit.

Another worry is that if the cultural atmosphere of the Spring Festival is diluted, bad practices such as gambling may fill the vacuum in the guise of celebrations. Illegal practices may flourish during the festival.

The most unacceptable thing is that some families make this festival a time to show off their wealth. They vie in buying new things as well as the amount of money put in the red envelopes.

It is obvious that the most traditional and essential part of the Spring Festival is disappearing. How to preserve the soul of the Spring Festival and strengthen the festive atmosphere is something we should all think about carefully.

Focus on family

Shuluxiansheng (baijiahao.baidu.com): When the traditional way of celebrating the Spring Festival begins to change, it implies the arrival of new ways of celebration. In other words, the elements of the agricultural era are being replaced by features of the industrial era. Urbanization is changing people's way of living, especially in China's vast rural areas. When the whole society undergoes rapid changes, ways to celebrate the Spring Festival can't be an exception.

So we don't need to fret about the traditional festive atmosphere disappearing. Instead, we should try to add something new from our era to this ancient festival. The issue is how to celebrate it in better and new ways.

First, we must try to preserve the essence of the Spring Festival. How to make the festival meaningful within the brief week-long holiday is a big question. We need innovation, which must be based on traditional customs and culture. What is the essence of the Spring Festival? We have to ask ourselves, why do we have the festival at all? Why do we take the trouble of undergoing such long journeys to go home for the festival?

Most people today live under huge pressure emanating from their work and daily life, which is eating into kinship. The Spring Festival offers the perfect opportunity for all busy people to leave work behind them, go back home and join their families to get connected to their relatives and friends again. To be together is the best way of maintaining kinship, and kinship is the essence of the Spring Festival.

Now that we have established the essence of the Spring Festival, we should celebrate it by focusing on kinship. There are already many new ways. Some people choose to travel together with their families, appreciating the beautiful sceneries inside and outside China; some take part in community activities with their families; and some families participate in entertainment activities together.

Even if you go nowhere and participate in nothing, as long as the whole family gets reunited, whether at home, or in hometowns or in big cities where their adult children now live and work, that's what the Spring Festival is meant to offer.

Hu Haisheng (Guangming Daily): Unlike in the past, today we rarely see families going out to buy Spring Festival goods together, filling markets and stores. People no longer feel excited at the thought of eating meat and fish, or getting new clothes or receiving red envelopes, once a Spring Festival specialty. Today, the traditional festival is embracing elements of the new era, giving rise to new forms of celebration.

Fireworks have been banned, but the urban environment has improved during the festival. Besides, people can "meet" in WeChat groups, red envelopes are transferred on WeChat, and people can order new year goods online, without having to go to the market themselves.

With our daily lives improving, new ways of celebrating the Spring Festival will naturally pop up. Ensuring that the new ways better express what traditional festivals seek to deliver is necessary for the survival and prosperity of traditional festivals and culture.

If we stick to the old ways and forms and refuse to accept the new things appearing in the modern Spring Festival celebrations, it will only impede the survival of traditional festivals. What should always be cherished and preserved is the essence and soul of traditional festivals, not necessarily the forms.

Copyedited by Sudeshna Sarkar

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