Why is the first day of October the Cold Clothes Festival? Do you know how the Cold Clothes Festival came about? What are the historical allusions?

The Cold Clothes Festival is the first day of the tenth month of the lunar calendar, on which the ancients had some customs and habits such as offering sacrifices, granting clothes, and opening furnaces.

According to legend, the Cold Clothes Festival originated in the Zhou Dynasty, and in the relevant poems, there is a record of "July Fire, September Clothes", which means that from the beginning of the ninth month of the lunar calendar, the temperature will drop, the weather will gradually become cooler, in order to prevent the cold and warmth, people need to add some winter cotton clothes, so the Cold Clothes Festival is also called the "Clothes Festival", the first day of the tenth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. Therefore, the Cold Clothes Festival was also called the "Clothes Festival". Later on, the festival was evolved into sending winter clothes to distant relatives and burning winter clothes for deceased relatives. Nowadays, Qingming Festival, Zhongyuan Festival and Cold Clothes Festival are collectively known as the "Three Great Ghost Festivals" in China

Cold Clothes Festival, as a traditional festival of worship in China, has a lot of stories passed down about it.

The first is about the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty - Zhu Yuanzhang folk "awarding clothes", in early October, when the rice harvest season, when the emperor wore a winter coat, to tell the people that winter is coming, pay attention to the cold to keep warm. After Zhu Yuanzhang ascended to the throne, in order to comply with the will of heaven, in this day will be harvested adzuki beans, glutinous rice made of hot rice to share to the group of ministers to taste, and hold the corresponding "award clothes" gift;

The second is about Meng Jiangnu thousands of miles in search of her husband to send the cold clothes of the story, Meng Jiangnu husband was captured to send to the construction of the Great Wall, the beginning of October day cold, Meng Jiangnu with cold clothes to find her husband, but the story is about Meng Jiangnu, the husband was sent to the Great Wall. Meng Jiangnu took the cold clothes to search for her husband, but unfortunately her husband has died, so her grief and anger, crying day and night, the result of crying down the Great Wall, saw the bones of her husband. So the people inside and outside the Great Wall in order to commemorate the story of Meng Jiangnu's loyalty to her husband, the first day of the tenth lunar month, called "Cold Clothes Festival", and in the first day of the tenth lunar month to burn the cold clothes has become a kind of worship deceased relatives of the customs and habits.

There is also a theory that the ancient merchants in order to promote the trick, the merchant Huiniang in order to make the paper to sell out, made up their own farce, so that the people around the belief that the ordinary paper in the world, in the netherworld can be used as a money spent. So there was also the custom of burning paper for rituals on the Cold Clothes Festival.