The Kitchen God Reports

Sweet Words to Heaven

The Kitchen God records each household’s deeds and reports to heaven, sweetened with candy before New Year.

The Kitchen God dwells all year by the stove, watching a household’s words and deeds and keeping a careful record for heaven. On the twenty-third or twenty-fourth day of the twelfth month he ascends to report to the Jade Emperor, and families send him off with offerings of sugar-melon candy — sweetening his report and gluing his mouth shut against ill words. On New Year’s Eve he is welcomed home, and the cycle begins again. The custom, rooted in ancient sacrifices to the stove, turned a homely deity into the conscience of every home and the herald of the year’s end.