The origin of the ghost festival on the fourteenth day of the seventh lunar month.

Ghost Festival originated from the story of Manglietia's rescue of mother: "People with Manglietia monks have great strength. His mother fell into the hungry ghost road, and the food mouth turned into flames. Hunger was too bitter. Unable to save her mother, Manglietia asked the Buddha for advice. In order to talk about the Lanpen Sutra, he taught July 15 to be a Lanpen to save his mother. " It is said that at that time, after experiencing all kinds of hardships in the underworld, Manglietia met her dead mother Liu and found that she was tortured by a group of hungry ghosts. Manglietia tried to give her a bowl of vegetable rice, but the vegetable rice was taken away by the hungry ghost. Manglietia had to ask the Buddha for help. The Buddha was moved by Manglietia's filial piety and gave him the Lanjing. According to the instructions, Manglietia dedicated a rare fruit vegetarian meal to her mother on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month. The hungry mother finally got the food. Buddhists hold a grand "bonsai" every year to commemorate the filial piety of Manglietia, which is what we now call "Ghost Festival".

History of Halloween:

Grave-sweeping in Tomb-Sweeping Day is related to funeral customs. According to records, in ancient China, "tombs were not graves", that is to say, only graves were dug, and no graves were built, so there was no way to offer sacrifices to sweep them. Later, graves and graves, the custom of offering sacrifices to sweep graves, were supported. During the Qin and Han Dynasties, offering sacrifices to tombs has become an indispensable custom. "Once"? The Book of Ming Di quoted the official etiquette of the Han Dynasty as saying: "In ancient times, there was no tomb sacrifice, and Qin Shihuang slept next to the tomb, so Han remained unchanged. All tombs serve meals with gloom, hope, 24, dog days, society, wax and four o'clock. " The emperor is almost a festival. Ordinary officials and ordinary people don't have so much time and money, so Tomb-Sweeping Day gradually freezes in the 24 solar terms. At that time, the government will allow officials to take time off to offer sacrifices to sweep, and the people will also "go to their parents' graves for fields and roads, full of scholars and women, humble servants and beggars." "In the Tang Dynasty, the sweeping ceremony had combined cold food with Tomb-Sweeping Day. Bloom is warm in spring, so you can go to the grave with wine in your hand. Tomb-Sweeping Day is not only a ghost festival for sacrifice, but also a day for outing and entertainment.

From a secular point of view, the setting of these two ghost festivals is just right. Qingming coincides with the melting of snow and ice in the north. After rain erosion in autumn and winter and snow cover in winter, some loess on the tomb was washed down and became shorter and smaller. Sweep it with Qingming and add some soil to prevent the ancestors' houses from leaking and getting wet. July 15, beginning of autumn has passed, and the weather is getting colder and colder. It's time to add clothes. It's time to send some money to the underground ancestors to buy some clothes so as not to catch cold in winter.

The Chinese nation is a state of etiquette and has always paid attention to paying homage to its ancestors. I remember when my family used to pay homage to their ancestors during the Chinese New Year, the words above were "woody water source" and "Zongshen pursues distant places", which means not to forget the ancestors. During the Cultural Revolution, who dared to burn paper on the grave when capitalism was broken and superstition was opposed? There is no burning paper to buy in the city, but many people still buy white paper to order books for primary school students and secretly burn them to their relatives on the graves. In recent years, with the development of economy, sacrificial supplies have become a major category for businesses to make money. Every Qingming Festival and July 15th, the burning paper in the street is pushed into a hill in front of the store, and the variety and quantity are as many as the fruit boxes piled up during the Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival. Moreover, there are some modern commodities, which are burned into bundles, neat and beautiful, and the marks of ancient coins are evenly printed on them. There are also colorful dollars and Hong Kong dollars, all with large denominations, each of which is hundreds of millions. Coupled with the gold ingots of different sizes in Huang Cancan, if there is a ghost country bank, it will be ashamed of the lack of financial resources and willing to close down. Can burning so much money really make the deceased relatives live a rich life in the underworld? I don't know, there is a saying that "sincerity is the spirit", which means that the heart is there. I remember when I was a child, the old man said that it was not easy to print ready-made burning paper, and no matter how big the face value was, it was useless. It is best to take a chisel that carves wood into copper coins and tap it on the paper with a small hammer. There are many things to pay attention to when typing a paper. It is best to be a descendant of ancestors, and it must be a boy. The hammer must be made of wood, and the marks of hitting cannot be stacked together. When I was a child, I used to do it during the Spring Festival or two Halloween. The old man told me that it would be good to put a seal on it, for fear that he would not know. When he goes to the underworld, he always hits hard. He is also afraid of having less money and not enough ancestors, so he has been playing closely. Although there is more paper now and it looks beautiful, I think the paper money I played when I was a child in later generations can better reflect my true feelings for my ancestors. Of course, on the day of Ghost Festival, from Shan Ye to the street, there are flames everywhere, smoke everywhere, paper scraps flying, causing environmental pollution, and sometimes causing fires and unnecessary losses. What can we do? The custom handed down from ancestors, China people have not learned to use flowers to express their grief and nostalgia for their deceased relatives like westerners. Halloween sacrifice cannot be simply regarded as superstition. In western Christian countries, modern science has sent people to the moon and rockets to Mars, but they still believe in God, which is actually a spiritual sustenance. We burn some paper for our deceased relatives, which seems vulgar, but in fact it contains rich moral and ethical connotations. This is a kind of gratitude and nostalgia for the deceased relatives, a dialogue with people in another world, an exchange with ancestors and a continuation of human race and spirit. Even if relatives are alive, there are cases of unfilial or thoughtless care. When burning paper on the grave, you can get a psychological balance by chanting a few words. Perhaps with the development of the times and the improvement of people's education level, our nation will find a better way to commemorate our ancestors, but in any era, it is indispensable to pay tribute to and remember our ancestors.

Legend has it that July 15 of the lunar calendar is a day when the gates of hell are wide open, and you can spend a day among the dead, including some ghosts who can accept sacrifices from the dead, so that day is also called Ghost Festival.