The Spring Festival refers to the traditional Lunar New Year in the cultural circle of Chinese characters, commonly known as the "Chinese New Year Festival". The traditional names are New Year, New Year and New Year, but they are also verbally called New Year, Celebrating New Year and New Year. This is the most solemn traditional festival of the Chinese nation.
The fifteenth day of the first month is Lantern Festival.
On the fifteenth day of the first month, the custom activities mainly include watching lanterns, swimming lanterns, gambling on boats, burning firecrackers, burning fireworks, picking green flowers and celebrating the Lantern Festival. Lantern Festival is the main traditional festival in China, also called Yuanxiao and Yuanxiao, and Shangyuan Festival, because it is the first full moon night of the New Year. Because this festival has the custom of watching lanterns in past dynasties, it is also called Lantern Festival.
The formation of Lantern Festival custom has a long process. According to general data and folklore, the fifteenth day of the first month was paid attention to in the Western Han Dynasty. On the night of the first month, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty offered sacrifices to "Taiyi" in Ganquan Palace, which was regarded by later generations as the first sacrifice to the gods on the fifteenth day of the first month. Being at a new time point, people make full use of this special time stage to express their life wishes.
The custom of putting lights on the Lantern Festival developed into an unprecedented lantern market in the Tang Dynasty, and after the middle Tang Dynasty, it developed into a national carnival. In the prosperous period of the Tang Xuanzong Kaiyuan (685-762 AD), the lantern market in Chang 'an was very large, with 50,000 lanterns and all kinds of lanterns. The emperor ordered 20 giant lantern buildings with a height of 150 feet, resplendent and magnificent.
Since then, the Lantern Festival has continued to develop and the time of the Lantern Festival has become longer and longer. The Lantern Festival in Tang Dynasty is "the day before and after Shangyuan". In the Song Dynasty, two days were added after the sixteenth, and in the Ming Dynasty, it was extended from the eighth day to the eighteenth day to ten days. In the Qing dynasty, the imperial court no longer held lantern festivals, but the folk lantern festivals were still spectacular.