Why do you hang wormwood on Dragon Boat Festival?

The Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month is the first traditional festival after summer. At this time, the temperature rises, which is when harmful substances such as bacteria and viruses are easy to spread. Therefore, in ancient times, people usually put a few mugwort trees in front of their homes.

Because wormwood itself has a very hot smell, people use its efficacy to drive away diseases, prevent mosquitoes and ward off evil spirits. "Ai" is also known as mugwort and mugwort. Its stems and leaves contain volatile aromatic oils. Its unique fragrance can repel mosquitoes, flies, insects and ants and purify the air.

Dragon Boat Festival is a festival founded by the ancestors of Baiyue in ancient times to worship their ancestors. According to legend, Qu Yuan, a Chu poet in the Warring States Period, committed suicide by jumping into the Miluo River on May 5th. Later, people also took the Dragon Boat Festival as a festival to commemorate Qu Yuan.

Generally speaking, the Dragon Boat Festival originated from the auspicious day when the ancestors of Baiyue in the south chose "Dragon Ascending to Heaven" to worship the dragon ancestors, and injected the seasonal fashion of "eliminating diseases and preventing epidemics" in summer. Dragon Boat Festival is considered as an "evil moon day", which originated in the northern part of the Central Plains to commemorate Qu Yuan and other historical figures.