The Cold Clothes Festival is popular in the north, and many northerners will offer sacrifices on this day to commemorate their deceased relatives. This is called sending cold clothes. In the north, Hanyi Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day in spring and Mid-Autumn Festival on July 15 are collectively called the three "ghost festivals" in China. At the same time, this day also marks the arrival of severe winter, so it is also a day to send warm clothes to parents, lovers and others who care about it.
According to the Book of Rites, October is the month of beginning of winter. On this day, the son of heaven led three officials and nine ministers to the northern suburbs to hold a winter welcoming ceremony, and returned after the ceremony to reward those who died for their country and compensate their wives and children. How to reward the dead? Giving them "warm clothes" should be the proper meaning in the title, so it will become a habit if you work hard. However, this view can only stay in inference, because the records of "sacrifice" and "clothing, boots, shoes, hats and clothes" of the Han people on the first day of October did not appear in the local chronicles of scholars until the Song Dynasty. If the Cold Clothes Festival was formed in the pre-Qin period, it is difficult to make a reasonable explanation for such a long record gap. Therefore, some people infer that the formation of the custom of Cold Clothes Festival will not be earlier than the Song Dynasty.
According to legend, in the Qin Dynasty, Meng and Jiang planted melons and got a daughter named Fan Qiliang. Later, Qi Liang was taken to northern Xinjiang to repair the Great Wall and went all the way to find her husband to send warm clothes at the foot of the Great Wall. She didn't want her husband to die and be buried in the wall. Meng Jiangnu was sad and angry, crying to the Great Wall day and night. Finally, she felt the earth shaking, crying down the Great Wall and revealing her husband's bones. For thousands of years, this faithful love story has been widely circulated.
After Meng Jiangnu cried down the Great Wall for 800 miles, she fought face to face with Qin Shihuang to avenge her husband and vent her anger on herself. Finally, she jumped into the sea with her husband's bones in her arms. At the moment of jumping into the sea, the sea was rough and slowly arched two reefs. It is said that the grave of Jiang Nv at sea, no matter how big the tide is, has never been topped.
Because of the story that Meng Jiangnv traveled thousands of miles to find her husband to send cold clothes, the first day of the tenth lunar month is called "Cold Clothes Festival" inside and outside the Great Wall. "Burning cold clothes on the first day of October" has long been a way for the North to mourn their deceased relatives.