What's the difference between Cold Food Festival and Tomb-Sweeping Day?

The Cold Food Festival, also known as "Smoke-free Festival", "Cold Food Festival" and "Hundred Five-Day Festival", is held in the summer from winter to the future 105, and one or two days before Tomb-Sweeping Day. When the first day of the day is a holiday, smoking is forbidden and only cold food is eaten. In the development of later generations, the customs of sweeping, walking, 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. China used to celebrate the Spring Festival at the Cold Food Festival until it was changed to Tomb-Sweeping Day.

The source of the Cold Food Festival should be the fire worship of the ancients. The ancients could not live without fire, but fire often did great harm to human beings, so the ancients thought that fire had gods and should be worshipped. Every family's fire is extinguished once a year, and then a new fire is rekindled. This is called changing the fire. When changing the fire, a grand ancestor worship activity should be held, and the symbol of millet, the god of cereal, should be burned, which is called human sacrifice. After the custom was passed down, the later Fire Festival was formed.

The Fire Prohibition Festival, which later evolved into the Cold Food Festival, is used to commemorate the famous minister of Jin in the Spring and Autumn Period. As a result, the custom of "cold food without fire" was handed down by later generations. Before the Han Dynasty, the Cold Food Festival was banned for a long time, lasting for one month. From the pre-Qin Dynasty to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Cold Food Festival was regarded as a major festival. The Tang Dynasty is also a national grand festival. After the late Tang Dynasty and the Song Dynasty, the custom of forbidding fire and cold food gradually faded and declined. As time goes by, people say that the Cold Food Festival and Tomb-Sweeping Day become one.

Tomb-Sweeping Day: Tomb-Sweeping Day is one of the 24 solar terms in the lunar calendar. At the turn of mid-spring and late spring, it is usually 106 days after the winter solstice. The traditional Tomb-Sweeping Day of the Han nationality in China began in the Zhou Dynasty and has a history of more than 2,500 years.

Qingming is generally around April 5 of the Gregorian calendar every year. Because the 24 solar terms objectively reflect the changes of temperature, rainfall and phenology throughout the year, ancient working people used them to arrange agricultural activities.

However, 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. Tomb-Sweeping Day is also called an outing festival. According to the Gregorian calendar, April 4-6 every year is a season of bright spring and lush vegetation, and it is also a good time for people to have a spring outing. Therefore, the ancients had the custom of going for an outing in Qingming and carrying out a series of sports activities.

Later, Tomb-Sweeping Day gradually evolved into a traditional festival in China, and it is also the most important festival to worship ancestors and sweep graves.