Is Tomb-Sweeping Day the same as the Cold Clothes Festival?

Tomb-Sweeping Day is a traditional festival of sacrifice in China, which is different from the Cold Clothes Festival on the first day of October. This article will briefly share the connections and differences between these two festivals:

Tomb-Sweeping Day, also known as outing festival, outing festival, March festival, ancestor worship festival, etc. It was celebrated at the turn of mid-spring and late spring. Tomb-Sweeping Day originated from the ancestral belief and the custom of worshipping spring in ancient times, which has both natural and humanistic connotations. It is both a natural solar term and a traditional festival. Grave-sweeping and outing are the two major themes of Tomb-Sweeping Day etiquette and customs, and these two traditional themes have been passed down from ancient times to the present in China.

Tomb-Sweeping Day is a traditional major Spring Festival. It is a fine tradition of the Chinese nation since ancient times to sweep graves and remember our ancestors. It is not only conducive to promoting filial piety, awakening family memories, but also conducive to promoting the cohesion and identity of family members and even the nation. Tomb-Sweeping Day is a combination of natural solar terms and humanistic customs. It is a combination of good weather, favorable geographical position and human harmony, which fully embodies the idea of the ancestors of the Chinese nation to pursue the harmony of "heaven, earth and people", paying attention to adapting to the good weather and following the laws of nature. Tomb-Sweeping Day, Spring Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival are also called the four traditional festivals in China. Besides China, some countries and regions in the world also have Tomb-Sweeping Day, such as Viet Nam, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore.

Hanyi Festival, also known as "October Dynasty", "Ghost Festival" and "Ghost Festival", is the first day of October in the lunar calendar every year. It is a festival for people in northern China to pay homage to their ancestors and send cold clothes. It is said that it originated in the Zhou Dynasty, but actually it was formed not earlier than the Song Dynasty. The Cold Clothes Festival is popular in northern China, and many northerners will offer sacrifices on this day to commemorate their deceased relatives. This is called sending cold clothes. Northerners in China refer to the Cold Clothes Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day in spring and Mid-Autumn Festival on July 15 as the three "ghost festivals" in China.

Regarding the origin of the Cold Clothes Festival, according to the Book of Rites, October in the lunar calendar is the month of beginning of winter. On this day, the son of heaven led three officials and nine ministers to the northern suburbs to hold a winter welcoming ceremony, and returned after the ceremony to reward those who died for their country and pay debts for their wives and children. How to reward the dead? Giving them "warm clothes" should be the proper meaning in the title, so that it will work from top to bottom and then it will become a habit. However, this view can only stay in inference, because the records of "sacrifice" and "dressing, boots, shoes, hats and clothes" of people in the northern region on the first day of October did not appear in the local customs records of literati until the Song Dynasty. If the Cold Clothes Festival was formed in the pre-Qin period, it is difficult to make a reasonable explanation for such a long record gap. Therefore, some people infer that the formation of the custom of Cold Clothes Festival will not be earlier than the Song Dynasty.