The Origin and Legend of Cold Food Festival

Introduction: The Cold Food Festival was established to commemorate Jiexiu, a famous minister of loyalty, filial piety and righteousness in the Spring and Autumn Period, and has a history of 2640 years. It is the earliest traditional festival in China, about 200 years earlier than the Dragon Boat Festival. The following is my collection of legends about the origin of the Cold Food Festival. Welcome to read the reference!

Origin and Legend of Cold Food Festival 1 Origin: Did the culture of Cold Food Festival originate in Jiexiu?

According to legend, in the Spring and Autumn Period, meson Tui, who had the function of "protecting the monarch by cutting shares", assisted Jin Wengong Zhong Er, and made great contributions after returning to China, and became close to his mother (now Jiexiu City, Shanxi Province). Jin Wengong can't demand it. In desperation, he put Yamakaji on three sides and tried to force him to leave the mountain with his mother. However, the two ministers, Zhao Fei and Hu Yan, who fled with Zhong Er, knew that their contribution was not as good as that of Jietui, secretly set fire to all the people, and finally burned Jietui's mother and son on Mianshan. Later, in order to mourn him, Jin Wengong forbade China people to make a fire and cook on the day of burning mesons and only eat cold food. Later, it became a custom, and this day was designated as "Cold Food without Fire Festival".

The records of promoting mesons in the Cold Food Festival can be found in Zhou Juzhuan in the later Han Dynasty, Wei Wudi's Ming Punishment Order, Liang Zonggu's Chronicle of Jingchu in the Southern Dynasties, etc. Earlier records were found in Huan Tan's New Theory more than 2,000 years ago. When it comes to the customs of Taiyuan County, the book not only mentions "no food for five days in the dead of winter", but also mentions that this is "a push for intermediaries, so it is also".

Nowadays, the custom of sweeping graves, inserting willows, taking an outing and paying homage to relatives in tears in Tomb-Sweeping Day all originated from the activities of the ancient Cold Food Festival. Cold Food Festival is a festival specially designed to commemorate Jiexiu in ancient times. At the beginning, the content of the festival only asked everyone to ban fire and eat cold food. During the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties, the Cold Food Festival was held in the cold winter, and cold food was banned for a long time (there were records such as "Cold Food Festival in January" and "Fire Extinction as the Winter Solstice Day"), which caused serious consequences such as "old and weak" (in the words of the fire ban) and "harming people's lives" (in the words of Zhou Juzhuan of the later Han Dynasty). In order to get rid of this custom, the government implemented many prohibition measures during this period. In order to adapt to the survival, the Cold Food Festival gradually avoided the cold winter in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and was basically fixed on the first 105 day after the winter solstice. This time happened to be the Tomb-Sweeping Day period in the 24 solar terms. The Chronicle of Jingchu in Liang Zonggu of the Southern Dynasties said: "There was rain and wind last winter, which means that there was no fire in cold food for three days"; Jia Sixie's Book of Qi Yao Min in the Northern Wei Dynasty said: "Cooking is called cold food, covering the day before Qingming."

Although the Cold Food Festival was chosen during the reign of Tomb-Sweeping Day, until the Tang Dynasty, there were obvious boundaries and differences in content and time between the Cold Food Festival and Tomb-Sweeping Day. This demarcation and difference are mainly manifested in the fact that fire should be banned during the Cold Food Festival and changed in Tomb-Sweeping Day; The Cold Food Festival put out smoke for cold stoves, and Tomb-Sweeping Day rekindled a new fire on this day. This phenomenon has been described by ancient scholars and poets. After being demoted to Huangzhou, Su Dongpo, a great writer, paid close attention to the change of fire in Tomb-Sweeping Day every year, and wrote a lot of poems, such as "Changing Fire from Another Door", "Changing New Fire into New Tea", "Changing Tea Fire into Porridge" and "Living Fire for the Spring Festival". For the hot and cold food in the two festivals, the poet described it this way: Chen, a poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, wrote in Ying Tianchang: "See apricot porridge again, and no smoking is allowed in every family"; Han Kan's poem "Golden Gate" says: "Fresh smoke from elm fire is cooked food". Du Fu, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, also changed Qingming to hot food and cooked food. His poem "Cooked food is a symbol of Zongwen Zongwu" said: "Every few years, cooked food is forced by Wan Li"; Our ancient ancestors also used the change of fire between Qingming and cold food to create many strange tricks. For example, in order to meet the custom of nobles cooking new tea in the Spring Festival with Qingming new fire, many strange products were also produced by the people. According to the five-color line in the Ming Dynasty, Longan (now Sichuan) has the saying of "riding fire tea", which is unique in that it is "not in front of the fire, not behind the fire, so it is also. Qingming changed to fire, so I rode fire tea. " The most expensive record of this kind of tea, Beijing Suihua Ji, says that during the Qingming Festival, "new tea will arrive immediately. The price of the Solstice Palace is fifty gold, and the external price is twenty or thirty gold. Two days is two or three gold. "

Thanks to the winter solstice after One Happy and Fifth and the improvement of living environment in the Tang Dynasty, the Cold Food Festival soon became one of the biggest folk festivals in the Tang Dynasty. The activities of the Cold Food Festival in Japan and China soon increased many contents, such as cockfighting, willow planting, grave sweeping, mountain climbing, swinging, banquet, fire making, tea tasting, drinking, egg carving, cuju and so on. Among them, sweeping graves (also known as tomb exhibition and grave sweeping) has become a royal etiquette in the middle Tang Dynasty. The emperor of the Tang Dynasty opened a new garden and said, "Cold food is buried in the tomb, and the ceremony is unwritten. Handed down from modern times, it gradually became a custom. Why use filial piety? " It is appropriate to go to the grave. "With the royal approval, sweeping graves at the Cold Food Festival has become a common etiquette in the country. Liu Zongyuan, a famous writer in the Tang Dynasty, was banished to Liuzhou, Guangxi, and could not return to his hometown in Shanxi. He wrote to his father-in-law, Xu Mengrong, saying, "In modern times, courtesy is more important than sweeping. Whenever there is cold food and men and women are everywhere in the field, beggars all over the country go to their parents' graves, and wild ghosts who die from work in the field can enjoy the sacrifices of their children and grandchildren. But I can't go back to my hometown to be filial after four years of cold food. At this time, I only had a trombone to the north with my first meal ... "In the Tang Dynasty, there were many decrees about' visiting the DPRK on holiday, unlimited days' and' expressions'. During the Five Dynasties, several emperors personally offered sacrifices to burn paper money for every cold food, which was called "breaking away". The second princess of Tang kept her youngest son for a long time until the execution of the death penalty, so that she could bring a pot of wheat rice to her grave every year during the Cold Food Festival.

Due to the increase in activities during the Cold Food Festival, the Cold Food Festival in the Tang Dynasty has also increased from two days to four days, and it has increased to five days during the Lunar New Year. Tang Dezong Zhenyuan four-year cold food festival, the emperor and ministers held an internal bow meeting in Linde Hall. The five-day holiday of the Cold Food Festival is over, and the applause is not over yet. Tang Dezong temporarily gave the officials a day off. On March 9th, the sixth year of Zhenyuan, Tang Dezong simply ordered the whole country: The Cold Food Festival is connected with Tomb-Sweeping Day, and it is advisable to have a three-day holiday before and after the Spring Festival.

According to the official records of the history of the Song Dynasty, the Cold Food Festival in the Song Dynasty was also stipulated as seven days. Because there are two festivals, cold food and Qingming, during the seven-day holiday, over time, since the Northern Song Dynasty, some people are not so serious about the difference and demarcation between cold food and Qingming. For example, the Cold Food Festival, which has been circulating for more than a thousand years, banned fire, and the inscription of Huiluan Temple in Mianshan, Jiexiu wrote "Qingming Festival, no earth fire"; After hundreds of years of appellations, such as Meng Lianglu in the Southern Song Dynasty and Hua Meng Lu in Tokyo, the custom of cold food sweeping graves was written as "Tomb-Sweeping Day" when officials went out to sweep graves or save graves in the suburbs. This phenomenon is also reversed: for example, there is a famous peony called "Manyuanchun", which blooms in Tomb-Sweeping Day, and the Song people named it "15000 leaves", "cold peony" and "flowers before the fire". But generally speaking, it has become a fact that the appellation of cold food has been gradually merged and replaced by Tomb-Sweeping Day. To understand this long historical evolution process, it is not difficult to see through the following examples: the Cold Food Festival had the custom of offering sacrifices to the ancestral graves of the royal family in the Tang Dynasty, which was followed by the royal family in all previous dynasties. During the Five Dynasties, emperors of several dynasties used "cold food to worship heaven" in the literature of this "breaking away" activity. The emperors of Liao Dynasty also used "cold food" to drink. Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties basically used "Qingming every year"; Then look at the poet's expression of the same thing and the same topic. Bai Juyi, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, wrote, "Where can I forget wine?" In the poem, the unforgettable moment of wine is "cold food month ago." Zhou Xianwang, a poet in the Ming Dynasty, once wrote "Where to forget wine" after Bai Juyi's rhyme, but in his poem, he changed the unforgettable moment of wine to "Qingming has passed"; In the Tang Dynasty poet Zhang Ji's poem "Journey to the North Mang", there is a phrase "Those who eat cold food give paper money", and the Ming Dynasty poet Zhang Kai also wrote a poem "Journey to the North Mang" based on this rhyme, but the rhyme sentence has become "Worrying about killing February and March in Qingming".

Another example is the swing play, which is a popular entertainment for women in the ancient cold food festival. In the Tang Dynasty, it was recorded in Kaiyuan Tianbao Legacy that "a swing was erected from the palace to the Cold Food Festival", and in the Song Dynasty, "smoking is not allowed in the Cold Food Palace, and Yu Jintang painted a swing in the north". Wen Yanbo presented the brocade woven in Chengdu to the court on the grounds of "the need for cold food in the palace". However, in the Ming Dynasty, it was changed to "Tomb-Sweeping Day is also a swing festival" in Lun Heng Ce, and the poem of Zhu Rifan, a poet in the Ming Dynasty, also said that "the people in the water country plant willows, and the women in Qingming compete."

After the Yuan Dynasty, the main content of the Cold Food Festival, that is, no smoking and no cold food, began to gradually disappear. The appellation of cold food was gradually replaced by Qingming. However, the fact that Tomb-Sweeping Day's activities originated from the Cold Food Festival has not been forgotten. Until the Qing Dynasty, some poets sang poems and expressed their feelings as usual during the Cold Food Festival (such as Emperor Kangxi's "Crossing the Valley"); The activities of sweeping graves in the Cold Food Festival are still written into important imperial edicts (such as Li Tong Gan Long Xi in Qing Dynasty). Some local chronicles compiled in the Ming and Qing Dynasties (such as the local chronicles of An, Chongqing, Hangzhou and Anhui) record the activities of local Tomb-Sweeping Day customs, which all indicate that this means "no smoking in cold food"; Some folk monographs even tell people bluntly: "Qingming is a cold food" (The Year of Yanjing by Manchu folklorist Fu Cha Dunchong).

Today, the custom of Cold Food Festival has been basically forgotten by China people, while the custom of Tomb-Sweeping Day is still an important traditional festival for China people to seek roots to worship their ancestors and remember their heroes and relatives. Although the custom of sweeping graves in Tomb-Sweeping Day was not the symbol of the Cold Food Festival, it originated from cold food after all.

The Origin and Legend of Cold Food Festival Chapter II Cold Food Festival, also known as "Smoke-free Festival", "Cold Food Festival" and "Hundred Days Festival". One hundred and five days after the summer solstice, and one or two days before Tomb-Sweeping Day. Smoking is forbidden and only cold food is eaten on this day, so it is called "Cold Food Festival". In the development of later generations, the customs of sweeping, hiking, swinging, cuju, holding hooks and breaking eggs gradually increased. The Cold Food Festival lasted for more than 2,000 years and was once called the largest folk festival.

The origin of cold food

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 monarch "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 out of the mountain, but meson was determined not to go out of the mountain and eventually died in a fire.

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.

The custom of cold food festival-no fire

The Cold Food Festival was also called "No Smoking Festival" in ancient times. Everyone is forbidden to make a fire and eat cold food. However, due to the persistent pursuit of sages by Chinese people, it was repeatedly banned from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and it was not until the Tang Dynasty that it was recognized and participated by the royal family. "Try new fire and new tea" in Su Shi's "Looking at Jiangnan Transcendent Taigong" is about the poet's behavior after cold food. The folk custom of forbidding fire and cold food in Shanxi is mostly one day, and only a few places are used to forbidding fire for three days.

recite/chant poems

During the Cold Food Festival, literati or homesick relatives, or borrowing scenery, have feelings, feelings, inspirations, poems and chanters. According to the survey, The Complete Poems of Tang Dynasty alone contains more than 300 poems by famous people such as Tang Xuanzong, Zhang Shuo, Du Fu, Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan, as well as more than 100 poems in the Song, Jin and Yuan Dynasties, making it a wonderful work in Chinese poetry art.

Cold food poetry

cold drink and snack

plum

Spring city is full of flowers,

Cold food, east wind and willows.

At sunset, in the Han Palace, people distribute candles.

Light smoke scattered into Wuhou mansion.