The origin and customs of Chinese traditional festivals:
Dragon Boat Festival
The fifth day of the fifth lunar month every year. According to the Records of Jingchu's Years, it is recorded that it is midsummer when the sun is on the mountain in midsummer, and it is midsummer in May. Its first afternoon is the day when it is sunny to climb the mountain in the sun, so the fifth day of May is also called "Duanyang Festival". In addition, the Dragon Boat Festival is also called "Noon Festival, May Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Bathing Orchid Festival". The Mid-Autumn Festival, Spring Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day and Mid-Autumn Festival are also called the four traditional festivals of the Han nationality in China.
2. Mid-Autumn Festival
The Mid-Autumn Festival is a traditional festival in China. According to historical records, the word "Mid-Autumn Festival" first appeared in the book Zhou Li. By the time of Wei, there was a record of "telling Shangshu Town that cattle were confused, and the mid-autumn evening and the left and right were traveling across the river incognito". It was not until the early years of the Tang Dynasty that the Mid-Autumn Festival became a fixed festival. The Book of Tang Taizong records the Mid-Autumn Festival on August 15th. The prevalence of Mid-Autumn Festival began in the Song Dynasty, and by the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it was as famous as New Year's Day and became one of the major festivals in China. This is also the second largest traditional festival in China after the Spring Festival. Since ancient times, Mid-Autumn Festival has had customs such as offering sacrifices to the moon, enjoying the moon, eating Yue Bai, enjoying osmanthus flowers and drinking osmanthus wine, which have spread to this day and lasted for a long time.
3. Spring Festival
The Spring Festival originated from the activities of offering sacrifices to gods and ancestors at the beginning and end of the Yin and Shang Dynasties, and it is the grandest, most lively and most important ancient traditional festival in China. In China folk, the traditional Spring Festival refers to the sacrificial rites from La Worship on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month or on the 23rd or 24th of the twelfth lunar month to the 15th day of the first lunar month, with New Year's Eve and the first day of the first lunar month as the climax. Eating rice cakes in the Spring Festival, "it is better to take the year than the year, so as to pray for the year." It means that everything goes well every year. The types of rice cakes are: white cakes and yellow rice cakes in the north; There are water mill rice cakes in Jiangnan; There is glutinous rice in the southwest; There are red turtle cakes in Taiwan Province. The title of "Gao" already existed in Yang Xiong's Dialect in Han Dynasty, which was popular in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. Jia Sixie's Qi Min Yao Shu records the making method.
4. Lantern Festival
The Lantern Festival, also known as Shangyuan Festival, Xiaoyuan Festival, Yuanxi Festival or Lantern Festival, is the first important festival after the Spring Festival. The first month is the first month of the lunar calendar. The ancients called the night "Xiao", so the fifteenth day of the first full moon in a year was called the Lantern Festival. Sima Qian founded taichu calendar, which listed the Lantern Festival as a major festival. "Sui Shu Yinlezhi" Day: "Every time in the first month, all countries come to Korea, and stay until the fifteenth day in Jianguomen outside Duanmen, which stretches for eight miles, and it is a theater." Tens of thousands of people participated in singing and dancing, from faint to dull. Traditional customs include going out to enjoy the moon, burning lanterns and setting off flames, enjoying solve riddles on the lanterns, eating Lantern Festival and pulling rabbit lanterns. In addition, in many places, traditional folk performances such as playing with dragon lanterns, playing with lions, walking on stilts, rowing dry boats, dancing yangko and playing Taiping drums have been added to the Lantern Festival.
5. Tomb-Sweeping Day
Tomb-Sweeping Day, also known as the Walking Festival, is one of the traditional festivals in China, and it is also one of the most important festivals. It is the day to worship ancestors and sweep graves at the turn of mid-spring and late spring, that is, the 114th day after the winter solstice. The name of Tomb-Sweeping Day is related to the characteristics of weather and climate at this time. In the Western Han Dynasty's "Huainanzi Astronomical Training", it was said: "On the fifteenth day after the vernal equinox, when the bucket refers to B, the Qingming wind will come." "Qingming wind" is a refreshing and clear wind. "When I was 111 questions" said, "Everything grows at this time, and it is clean and bright. So it is called Qingming. " Although Qingming, as a festival, was only formed in the Tang Dynasty, Tomb-Sweeping Day Qi, as a symbol of time sequence, has long been known by the ancients and clearly recorded in the Han Dynasty.
6. Double Ninth Festival
Double Ninth Festival, the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, is called "Double Ninth Festival". People have the custom of climbing mountains on that day, so it is called "Climbing Festival". There are also sayings such as Double Ninth Festival, cornus and Chrysanthemum Festival. Because the homonym of "Jiujiu" on the ninth day of September is "for a long time" and has a long-lasting meaning, it is often used to worship ancestors and carry out activities to respect the elderly. The Double Ninth Festival and the three festivals of "Chu", "Qing" and "Yu" are also the four major festivals for ancestor worship in traditional festivals in China. On February 28, 2112, the law made it clear that the ninth day of the ninth lunar month is the festival for the elderly. Many important books, such as Beginners in the Tang Dynasty and Taiping Yu Lan in the Song Dynasty, have relayed this story in Wu Jun's "The Story of Continuation of Qi and Harmony", and think that the custom of women tying cornus's bag on their arms to ward off evil spirits and ward off disasters comes from this.
7. Chinese Valentine's Day
Chinese Valentine's Day, also known as Beggar's Day, Seven Clever Days or Seven Sisters' Birthday, originated in China and is a traditional festival in Chinese areas and East Asian countries. The festival comes from the legend of Cowherd and Weaver Girl, and is celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month (it was changed to July 7 in the solar calendar in Japan after the Meiji Restoration). Chinese Valentine's Day takes the folklore of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl as the carrier, expressing the feelings that married men and women will never give up and grow old together, and abiding by their commitment to love. With the development of time, Qixi has become China Valentine's Day. There are also records of Petunia and Weaver Girl in Historical Records Tianguanshu and Hanshu Tianwenzhi. In The Story of Jingchu Years Old written by Zong Huai in Jin Dynasty, it is said that Zhinu is the granddaughter of the Emperor of Heaven, and she met Petunia in the Milky Way on the night of July 7, which has drawn a clear outline for this love story.
8. Mid-Autumn Festival
The Mid-Autumn Festival, commonly known as Ghost Festival, July 31, shi gu, Local Officials' Day or Lent, falls on July 15th of the lunar calendar every year (July 14th in some areas). In the Han Dynasty, the Mid-Autumn Festival was a festival to celebrate the harvest and reward the earth in the early autumn. Some crops were ripe, so the people were required to worship their ancestors and offer sacrifices such as new rice to report Qiu Cheng to their ancestors. Taoism believes that the Mid-Yuan Festival is the birthday of the local officials, and on the day when they pray for forgiveness of sins, all ghosts will be released from the underworld, and the deceased ancestors can go home for reunion, so it is also the Ghost Festival, which is called the Bonne Festival in Buddhism. Folk people generally carry out activities such as offering sacrifices to ghosts, ancestors, and recommending food. Offering sacrifices to ancestors and recommending food at the right time is also called "Zhai He Gu" in Nanjing and Jianghuai areas of China. In the old days, monks crossed the dead by the river and put paper lotus lanterns in the river, so it was also called "Zhai He Gu".
9. New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve, also known as New Year's Eve, New Year's Eve and Big Dark Day, is the night on the last day of the lunar year, that is, the night before the Spring Festival. December of the lunar calendar is mostly a big month with 31 days, so it is also called New Year's Eve, New Year's Eve and New Year's Eve. In December, the moon falls on the 29th, and some areas will be renamed as the 29th. The original meaning of the word "except" in "New Year's Eve" is "go", which is extended to "easy", that is, alternating; The original meaning of the word "evening" is "sunset" and it is extended to "night". Therefore, "New Year's Eve" means that the old year will be removed the next evening, and the new year will be replaced tomorrow. Elimination in pre-Qin period. According to "Lu's Spring and Autumn Ji Dong Ji", the ancients used drums to drive out the "ghost of plague" on the day before the New Year, which is the origin of the "New Year's Eve" festival.
11. Cold Food Festival
Cold Food Festival: 115 days after the summer solstice and one or two days before Tomb-Sweeping Day. When the first day of the day is a festival, smoking is forbidden and only cold food is eaten. In the development of later generations, customs such as sweeping sacrifices, hiking, swinging, cuju, hooking and cockfighting were gradually added, and the Cold Food Festival lasted for more than 2,111 years. The origin of the Cold Food Festival, according to historical records: During the Spring and Autumn Period, Zhong Er, the son of the State of Jin, fled into exile in other countries for 19 years, and the minister Jiezitui always followed around and never gave up; Even "cutting stocks". However, Meson Tui did not want to get rich, so he retired to Mianshan with his mother. Jin Wengong ordered Yamakaji to be released in order to force him out of the mountain, but Meson Tui was determined not to go out of the mountain and eventually died of fire. Jin Wengong, mindful of his ambition to be a loyal minister, buried him in Mianshan, built a shrine and built a temple, and ordered that the fire and cold food be banned on the day of Jietui's death, in order to express his grief. This is the origin of the "Cold Food Festival". The record that the Cold Food Festival originated from the burning of Jietui in Mianshan, Jiexiu, was first found in Huan Tan's New Theory Volume 11 Leaving Things in the Western Han Dynasty, and was later published in the later Han Dynasty, the later Han Dynasty, Zhou Juchuan, Cao Cao's Ming Punishment Order, and the Book of Jin and Shile Biography.
Chinese traditional festivals are diverse in form and rich in content, and they are an important part of the long history and culture of the Chinese nation. It is the legal system of "a civilized society ruled by law". It is the basic framework of regional civilized countries.
The origin and development of festivals is a "gradually formed and perfected cultural process" of human society, and it is the product of the evolution and development of civilization from apes to humans. The traditional festivals in China are loaded with myths, legends, astronomy, geography, magic numbers, calendars, and other humanistic and natural cultural contents.
Literature records can be traced back to Xia Xiaozheng and Shangshu at least. By the Warring States Period, the 24 solar terms in a year had been basically completed, and later traditional festivals were all closely related to these solar terms.