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.
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.