Customs of Tomb-Sweeping Day in Shaanxi Province

The customs in Tomb-Sweeping Day, Shaanxi Province include offering sacrifices, walking in the spring and giving each other paper money.

1, Sacrifice: Sacrifice is a part of Chinese code of ethics and is the main part of Confucian etiquette. Rite has five classics, so it is not more important than sacrifice, but for the happiness of the gods.

2. Spring outing: China folk spring outing, hiking in suburban Yuan Ye, playing various games, playing cuju, swinging and flying kites.

3, paper money gifts: Qingming in Xingping County, in-laws give each other paper money and worship each other's graves. Every household in Fuping County invited the famous mountain springs to source water in Tomb-Sweeping Day, and * * * gave gifts to a god. It is called "swimming" to prepare sacrifices to pray for a bumper harvest. After the Qingming Festival in Tongzhou County, willow branches were inserted into the door; And put paper money on the trunk, which is said to prevent insects and ants. Luochuan county steamed buns for food, and the buns were decorated in the shape of birds and snakes. It is said that meson was protected by birds and snakes when it was pushed to Mianshan, so it was kept as a souvenir.

The Cultural Connotation of Tomb-Sweeping Day

Tomb-Sweeping Day has a long history, which originated from the ancestors' beliefs and spring sacrificial customs of early human beings. According to the research results of modern anthropology and archaeology, the two most primitive beliefs of human beings are the belief in heaven and earth and the belief in ancestors. According to archaeological excavations, a 10,000-year-old tomb was found at the Qingtang site in Yingde, Guangdong Province, which is the earliest tomb in China, indicating that ancient ancestors had a clear sense of burial behavior and customs thousands of years ago.

The custom of "grave-sweeping sacrifice" has a long history, and Qingming "grave-sweeping sacrifice" is the synthesis and sublimation of traditional spring customs. The establishment of the ancient branch calendar provided decisive conditions for the formation of festivals. Ancestor belief and sacrificial culture were important factors in the formation of ancestral worship custom in Qingming Festival.