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Beijing Mid-Autumn Festival custom: offering lanterns to worship ancestors?
Mid-Autumn Festival, which has many names among the people, such as "July 30" and "Ghost Festival", is the biggest festival in the underworld in China. The customs of the Mid-Autumn Festival are different in every place. Let's learn about the customs of the Mid-Autumn Festival in old Beijing culture with Xiaobian. There is a very special way to spend the Mid-Autumn Festival in Beijing.

Customs of the Mid-Autumn Festival in Old Beijing On this day, there are folk customs in old Beijing, such as the Mid-Autumn Festival, the worship of three officials, the Bonsai Festival, burning boats, offering sacrifices to ancestors, setting off river lanterns, lighting lotus lanterns, and sending sheep.

Custom of Mid-Autumn Festival in Old Beijing: On this day, all families offered sacrifices to their deceased relatives for five generations, to show that they were "cautious in pursuing the distance". The Qing Dynasty's "Beijing Sui Hua Ji" contains: "The tomb before the Mid-Yuan Festival is as clear as the tomb." The Qing Dynasty's "Ji Sheng at the Age of Emperor Jing" also said: "The mid-Yuan Festival is better than Qingming. The branches of the green trees, the green grasses are flourishing, the cicadas are singing birds, and they are happy to help others swim. "

In general, ancestral ceremonies will be held in the ancestral temple in the imperial palace. There are many forms of ancestor worship among the folk people. Some people go to the graveyard to burn money and paper, while others take the package containing gold and silver paper ingots as the main theme at home, use three bowls of dumplings or other fruits as sacrifices, and burn the package outside the door after paying tribute to incense. According to the Ming Dynasty's "A Brief Introduction to the Scenery of the Imperial Capital", it is said: "Going to the grave is like the Qingming Festival, or making a small bag in the past, and the sacrifice is just over, so it is necessary to dig out the tomb to promote weaving. If you are full of bags, you will be happy. " It shows that since the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, Zhongyuan went to the grave with the nature of an autumn outing. At the beginning of autumn, it is undoubtedly a trip for children to sweep graves with the whole family, and the children have long forgotten the "Ghost Festival".

Customs of the Mid-Autumn Festival in old Beijing: It is an important custom of the Mid-Autumn Festival to light river lanterns and lotus lanterns at night, and it is also another traditional lantern festival in old Beijing after the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month.

River lanterns have a long history. The History of Ming Palace written by Liu Ruoyu, a Ming Dynasty, states: "On July 15th, in the Mid-Autumn Festival, the dessert house made offerings, and in the West Garden, river lanterns were set up." Xiyuan is the first three seas. The river lantern is also a lotus lantern, which is a custom handed down from ancient times to turn over the dead.

Lotus lanterns in old Beijing are all made of natural lotus leaves and some good candles. At that time, watermelons, pumpkins and purple eggplant were also used to hollow out the center, and some good candles were inserted in it. These lamps were sent to the river and floated down the river naturally, forming a line of "water lamps", which rippled with the waves, and the candlelight reflected the stars and set each other off. At that time, Shichahai, Beihai, Jishuitan, Paozi River, Erzha outside Dongzhimen, Yuhe, moat and other places in Beijing were full of candlelight, and people gathered under the moon, which was very lively. In the TV series "Four Generations under One Family", the old man Qi turns off a river lantern by the river and turns over the dead, which truly reproduces the custom of the Mid-Yuan Festival in old Beijing.

Lotus lantern is a kind of lantern made of silk, silk yarn, colored paper or glass, which looks like lotus. Hanging lanterns has a history of more than 2,000 years. During the reign of Emperor Qianlong of Qing Dynasty, every night on July 15th in Yuanmingyuan, Emperor Qianlong and his empresses went to the "maze" of the western scenery to watch the ladies-in-waiting walk in the maze with lotus lanterns made of silk. During the Republic of China, it was also a necessary custom to light lotus lanterns on July 15th. Children in quadrangles and painting houses all have a lotus lantern. Various markets in the market-Dongan Market, Longfu Temple, Chongwenmen Flower Market, Tianqiao, Shichahai Lotus Market, etc., have been selling lotus lanterns since Chinese Valentine's Day, and their lanterns are all kinds of flower baskets made of colored paper lotus petals or birds and animals such as cranes and herons, which can be purchased by anyone. Lotus leaf lanterns are extremely cheap in ordinary markets and small shops in hutongs. These lights are similar in appearance to river lanterns, except for a number of sticks and strings. Some poor children also use a big wormwood tree to tie a fragrant head, or use a lotus root to plug a fragrant head instead of a lotus lamp. What's even more unique is that eggplant is burned with a fragrant head, which is called "eggplant lamp"; It is called "watermelon lamp" when wax is inserted into the watermelon gourd ladle and burned.

The custom of Mid-Autumn Festival in old Beijing: sending sheep on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, also known as "sheep sending festival". Han Xu Shen said in Shuo Wen Jie Zi: "Sheep are auspicious." In Oracle Bone Inscriptions's Oracle Inscriptions, it is also called "sheep pass through the auspicious". It can be seen that in ancient times, sheep, an animal, always represented auspiciousness.

In the rural areas of old Beijing and North China, it is popular that grandfathers and uncles send live sheep to their little nephews on July 15th. Legend has it that this custom is related to the legend that agarwood splits the mountain to save mother. After Aquilaria split the mountain to save her mother, she wanted to kill her uncle Erlang, who abused her mother. In order to rebuild the friendship between brother and sister and uncle and nephew, Erlang gave Aquilaria a pair of live sheep on July 15th every year. It is said that this is a homonym for taking the surname of Erlang and Aquilaria's mother "Yang" to reunite the two families. From then on, the folk left the custom of sending live sheep to my uncle, and later it gradually evolved into sending a sheep to the other side.

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