Can I sweep graves during the Cold Food Festival?

Can the state-run cold food festival sweep graves?

The Cold Food Festival is a traditional festival in China, after the summer solstice and one or two days before Tomb-Sweeping Day. So today Bian Xiao is here to comb the Cold Food Festival for everyone. Can we sweep the grave? Let's have a look. I hope you like it!

Can I sweep graves during the Cold Food Festival?

You can sweep graves at the Cold Food Festival. The Cold Food Festival has been a festival of sacrifice since ancient times, and was once called the largest folk festival in China. Grave-sweeping is a kind of "grave sacrifice" and "respect for time thinking" to ancestors, and its custom has a long history. In the north, it is called going to the grave; in some places, it is called "sweeping mountains" or "worshipping mountains"; in the south, it is called "hanging mountains" or "hanging paper".

There are two kinds of "mountains" for offering sacrifices: one is called "home mountain" for tracing ancestors within three generations, and the sacrifice of home mountain is called "family sacrifice"; The other is the worship of clan ancestors, which is called "Zushan" and "Dazhongshan", and the worship of Zushan is called "sweeping Dazhongshan".

According to custom, people usually set off in the morning to visit graves. When sweeping graves, people should bring wine, food, fruit, paper money and other items to the cemetery, trim the graves, cultivate new soil, remove weeds, offer food to the graves of ancestors, then burn paper money and kowtow to worship.

The origin of the Cold Food Festival

The origin of the Cold Food Festival, according to historical records: During the Spring and Autumn Period, Zhong Er, the son of the State of Jin, fled to other countries and lived in exile for 19 years. Minister Jiezitui always followed around and never gave up; Even "cutting stocks."

Zhong Er tried to become a famous gentleman "Jin Wengong". But meson tui didn't want to make a fortune, so he lived in seclusion with his mother in Mianshan. Jin Wengong ordered the release of Yamakaji to force him to leave the mountain. Meson Tui was determined not to come out of the mountain and was eventually burned to death. Jin Wengong remembered his loyalty, buried him in Mianshan, built a shrine and a temple, and ordered the prohibition of cold food on the day of Jiexiu to express his grief. This is the origin of the "Cold Food Festival".

Before the calendar reform in Tang Ruowang in the early Qing Dynasty, Tomb-Sweeping Day was scheduled for two days after the Cold Food Festival. After the reform of the Tang family, the Cold Food Festival was held the day before Tomb-Sweeping Day. The definition of the modern twenty-four solar terms follows that of the Tang Dynasty, so the Cold Food Festival is the day before Tomb-Sweeping Day.

From the Spring and Autumn Period to the present, the Cold Food Festival has a history of more than 2,600 years. The story took place in Shanxi, China, and was set as the day before Tomb-Sweeping Day. On this day, the custom of eating cold food, offering sacrifices and having an outing has been handed down and accepted by the whole country. With the passage of time, the Cold Food Festival has quietly merged into Tomb-Sweeping Day, and the people represented by the Cold Food Festival have praised loyalty, honesty and political clarity for thousands of years.

Festival features

The Cold Food Festival originated from the burning of mesons in Mianshan, Jiexiu during the Spring and Autumn Period. Jin Wengong ordered a ban on fire and cold food on the anniversary of the child's death, and sent grief with cold food. By the time of the Tang Dynasty, a national statutory festival had been formed, and then it merged with Tomb-Sweeping Day, the earliest traditional festival in China. The Cold Food Festival was 2640 years ago. There were five days, one hundred and five days, one month, three days and two days, five days and seven days, and finally it became one day. From Jiexiu in Taiyuan County to all parts of the country.

From respecting the meson to carrying forward the political ambition of loyalty to the monarch and patriotism, retiring after success, being honest and clean, and not violating the filial piety of relatives, it has developed into an important festival that unites people's hearts, embodies the Chinese soul and reflects the ancestral culture of the Chinese nation. And form a series of cold foods such as glutinous rice and green rice.

During the Cold Food Festival, there are visits to grave-sweeping, no smoking, ancestor worship, cold food, willow insertion, outing, cuju, tree planting, swinging, flower viewing, cockfighting, banquet feeding and poetry reading. Many activities, such as banquets, flower viewing, cockfighting, egg carving, pulling a hook (tug of war), drilling wood for fire, flying kites, shooting herbs, throwing _ (pottery toys) and so on, greatly enriched the social life in ancient China.