When is the Cold Food Festival?

The Cold Food Festival in 2023 is April 4th in Gregorian calendar and February14th in lunar calendar.

The Cold Food Festival, also known as "Smoke-free Festival", "Cold Food Festival" and "Hundred Five Days Festival", is the 105th day from winter to the future in the summer calendar and one or two days before Tomb-Sweeping Day. When the first day of the day is a holiday, smoking is forbidden and only cold food is eaten. In the development of later generations, customs such as sweeping sacrifices, hiking, swinging, cuju, hooking hands and cockfighting were gradually increased. The Cold Food Festival lasted for more than two thousand years and was once called the largest folk festival.

The Cold Food Festival is the only traditional festival named after the dietary customs of the Han nationality. Until the Qing Dynasty, the Cold Food Festival gradually declined. Because cold food was close to Qingming, people only visited Tomb-Sweeping Day when it was combined with Qingming. Although the custom of the Cold Food Festival has been preserved, it is obvious that the Cold Food Festival has declined and disappeared.

The Cultural Influence of Cold Food Festival

The formation and evolution of the Cold Food Festival combines the wisdom and spiritual culture of the ancients, which is of great significance to the inheritance and development of civilization. Historically, the Cold Food Festival is a festival to commemorate the loyalty of mesons, which has a history of more than 2,000 years. The core of Cold Food Festival is loyalty, filial piety and honesty, which plays a connecting role in national unity and social stability, laying the foundation for the development of advanced culture and safeguarding the unity of the country, society and family.

In art, the Cold Food Festival has produced many works as writing themes in the historical development. Among the poems involved, there are only a few hundred poems about the Cold Food Festival in Tang and Song Dynasties. The famous poets involved are: Han Yu, Bai Juyi, Wang Anshi and Du Fu. The historical celebrities involved are: Tang Xuanzong, Cao Cao and so on. It provides important historical materials for the study of China's poetry culture.