1, pray for good weather in the coming year to ensure a bumper agricultural harvest.

In ancient China, the Emperor of Heaven, in December of the lunar calendar, used dry things to make a La Worship to worship the gods. La Worship includes two aspects: one is sacrifice; The second is prayer. Sacrifice is to worship the eight-valley star god, offering it with dry things to express the meaning of Qingfeng harvest. Dry matter is called wax, and eight is the god of eight grains and stars, so it is called Laba. In terms of time, La Worship is held on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month every year in the lunar calendar. The eighth day of the twelfth lunar month is also called Laba.

Prayer is an important aspect of La Worship, which is to pray for good weather in the coming year and ensure a bumper agricultural harvest. Every year on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, dry things are sacrificed to the eight-valley star god, and prayers are made, which are called Laba wishes or wax eight wishes, and they are homophonic with porridge. So on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, dried fruits and vegetables are mixed together, cooked into porridge, and offered to the agricultural god to express the meaning of harvest in Qingfeng, and prayed.

Laba porridge is used to homophone the meaning of Laba Zhu, which is the origin of Laba porridge. It means cooking porridge with dry things, offering sacrifices to the god of agriculture, praying and praying for blessing to celebrate the harvest.

2. In memory of Yue Fei

In Henan, Laba porridge, also known as "everyone's meal", is a festival food custom to commemorate the national hero Yue Fei. It is said that Yue Jiajun's crusade against Jin Lu was successively won in Zhuxian Town, but it was chased back by the court's twelve gold medals. On the way back to Li, the soldiers were hungry and hungry, and the Henan people along the way poured the meals sent by various families into cauldrons and boiled them into porridge for the soldiers to satisfy their hunger and keep out the cold. This day happened to be the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month.

Later, Yue Fei was killed in Fengbo Pavilion. In order to miss this national hero, every family in Henan eats "everyone's meal" on the day of Laba to show their nostalgia.

3, for the bodhisattva

Another way of saying it is that Laba porridge was originally cooked by Buddhist temples for bodhisattvas-eighteen kinds of dried fruits symbolize eighteen arhats, and later this custom became popular among the people. The story of Laba porridge in Buddhism comes from the story that a cowherd girl feeds chyle, which was later brought into effect by China's Buddhist disciples.

On the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month every year, porridge made from grains and fruits is offered to Buddha, which is called Laba porridge, also called Qibao Wuwei porridge. Up to now, this custom has gradually spread to the people, and most people have to cook Laba porridge on this day, which has become one of the folk customs.

Extended data

Labazhou shicai

The ingredients of Laba porridge vary from place to place. On the eighth day of the eighth lunar month, eight things are mixed and cooked. Among them, rice, carrots and vegetables are indispensable three treasures. In addition, there are peanuts (or soybeans), lotus seeds, ginkgo, tofu or oily tofu, taro and other ingredients. If you want to add more ingredients, you can put Sichuan fungus, red dates and vegetarian bean cakes, but you can't put vegetarian ham and mushrooms.

Nutritional value of Laba porridge

The main raw material of "Laba porridge" is cereal, and the commonly used ones are japonica rice, glutinous rice and coix seed. Japonica rice contains protein, fat, carbohydrate, calcium, phosphorus, iron and other ingredients, and has the functions of invigorating the middle energizer, nourishing the spleen and stomach, regulating the five internal organs, relieving vexation, quenching thirst and benefiting essence. Glutinous rice has the function of warming spleen and benefiting qi, which is suitable for people with low spleen and stomach function, and has certain auxiliary therapeutic effects on deficiency cold, diarrhea, thirst and dysuria.

Traditional Chinese medicine believes that coix seed has the functions of strengthening spleen, tonifying lung, clearing heat and infiltrating dampness, and it also has good effects on chronic enteritis and dyspepsia if eaten frequently. Coix seed rich in dietary fiber has the effect of preventing hyperlipidemia, hypertension, stroke and cardiovascular diseases.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Labazhou