What time of year is Tomb-Sweeping Day? What day is today?

Tomb-Sweeping Day is around April 5th of the Gregorian calendar every year, which is the15th day after the vernal equinox. Tomb-Sweeping Day is an important sacrificial festival in China. On this day, people's important activity is to sweep graves. A poem "Qingming" by Du Mu, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, has been circulated for thousands of years. 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.

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.

Extended data

The traditional Tomb-Sweeping Day in China began in the Zhou Dynasty and has a history of more than 2,500 years. Tomb-Sweeping Day is first of all a very important solar term. As soon as Tomb-Sweeping Day arrives, the temperature rises, which is a good season for spring ploughing and planting. Therefore, there is a saying that "melons and beans are planted before and after Qingming". Agricultural proverb "Planting trees is not as clear as Qingming".

Later, as the days of Qingming and cold food approached, cold food was the day when people banned fire to sweep graves. Gradually, cold food and Qingming became one, and cold food became another name of Qingming and became a custom of Qingming. On Qingming Day, there are no fireworks, only cold food.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Tomb-Sweeping Day