Is Qingming a solar term or a festival?

Tomb-Sweeping Day has a long history, which is both a solar term and a festival. The formation of festival customs is closely related to the characteristics of solar terms at this time. Twenty-four solar terms are the climate laws formulated by ancient people according to the change of the earth's position on the ecliptic, which objectively reflect the changes of temperature, phenology and rainfall in four seasons and have indispensable guiding significance for people to arrange agricultural production activities on time. After Tomb-Sweeping Day, the temperature became warmer, the rain increased, and the earth showed a beautiful scene of spring.

At this time, everything, whether it is the vegetation in nature or the human body in natural places, has changed the filth in winter, ushered in the breath of spring and realized the transformation from yin to yang. Therefore, Qingming is an important solar term in ancient agricultural production. As a festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day is different from pure solar terms. Solar terms are symbols of phenological changes and seasonal order in China, while festivals contain certain customs and activities, which have certain commemorative significance.

The origin of Tomb-Sweeping Day's grave-sweeping and ancestor-worship ceremony is related to the humanistic and natural cultural contents such as belief, sacrifice, calendar and solar terms. Tomb-Sweeping Day Qi provides important conditions for the formation of Tomb-Sweeping Day customs in terms of time and meteorological phenology, and this solar term is considered as one of the origins of Tomb-Sweeping Day.