When is Ghost Festival?

Traditionally, there are four Halloween festivals in China, namely, March 3rd, Tomb-Sweeping Day, July 15th and October 1st.

March 3 rd festival

In Jianghuai and Jiangnan areas, the third day of the third lunar month is called Ghost Festival every year. It is said that ghosts haunted this day. At night, every family will set off firecrackers in every house to scare away ghosts.

Qingming Festival

Also known as the outing festival, according to the solar calendar, it is between April 4th and 6th every year, which is a season of bright spring and lush vegetation, and also a good time for people to go for a spring outing (called outing in ancient times), so the ancients had the custom of going for an outing in Qingming and carrying out a series of sports activities. To this day, what we are most familiar with is the custom of ancestor worship and mourning for relatives in Tomb-Sweeping Day.

July 14/15

According to legend, from July 1 day every year, the king of Yan ordered the gates of hell to be opened wide, so that ghosts and spirits who suffered all the year round and were imprisoned in hell could leave the hell, get a short stroll and enjoy human blood. Therefore, people call July a ghost month, and this month is considered as an unlucky month, neither getting married nor moving.

Every year, the 14th/15th day of the seventh lunar month is Magnolia Festival, also known as Mid-Autumn Festival, July 30th or Ghost Festival. In the past, people would prepare some dishes, wine, rice, gold, silver, clothes and paper to worship ghosts and gods at the intersection on this night.

The tolerant festivals and customs on July 14/15 are very complicated, not only the folk ghost festival, but also the Taoist Mid-Yuan Festival, the Buddhist Sanri Festival and the combination of Buddhism, Taoism and Buddhism. Many places in China will hold activities such as offering sacrifices, worshipping Buddha, sweeping graves, reviewing, enjoying flowers and fishing to celebrate.

The first day of October

On the first day of October, it is called "October Dynasty", also known as "ancestor worship festival". Since ancient times, China has had the custom of offering sacrifices to ancestors in the new harvest season to show filial piety and not forgetting one's roots. So do people also use millet on the first day of October? Sacrifice ancestors. On the first day of 10, ancestors were sacrificed, including family sacrifices and grave sacrifices, whether in the north or the south. Today, in many areas south of the Yangtze River, there is also the custom of offering sacrifices to new graves on the first day of October. The first day of October is also the first day of winter, and the climate becomes cold after winter. People are afraid that the souls of the ancestors in the underworld are short of clothes. Therefore, in addition to the general offerings such as food, incense sticks and paper money, there is also an indispensable offering-ghost clothes. When offering sacrifices, people burn ghost clothes to their ancestors, which is called "sending cold clothes". Therefore, the first day of October is also called "Clothing Burning Festival".

Later, in some places, the custom of burning cold clothes changed. Instead of burning cold clothes, people burned a lot of ghost paper in a paper bag with the names of the recipients and senders and their corresponding names written on them. This is called "baggage". There is a name of cold clothes, but there is no reality of cold clothes. People think that the underworld, like the dead, can buy many things with money.