What are the origins and customs of Shangyuan Festival?

The first month is the first month of the lunar calendar. The ancients called night "night", so they called the fifteenth day of the first month "Lantern Festival". The fifteenth day of the first month is the night of the first full moon in a year and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty. On the night of Spring Festival, people celebrate this festival and the continuation of the Spring Festival. Lantern Festival is also called "Shangyuan Festival".

According to data and folklore, the fifteenth day of the first month was paid attention to in the Western Han Dynasty. On the first night of the first month of the first month, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty offered sacrifices to "Taiyi" (Taiyi: the God who rules everything in the universe) in Ganquan Palace, which was regarded by later generations as the forerunner of offering sacrifices to the gods on the fifteenth day of the first month. Yuanxiao originally meant "the night of Shangyuan Festival", because the main activities of Shangyuan Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month were to eat glutinous rice balls and enjoy the moon at night, and later the name of this festival evolved into "Lantern Festival".

2. Customs of Shangyuan Festival

In the Tang dynasty, it developed into an unprecedented lantern market, and after the middle Tang dynasty, it has developed into a national carnival. During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty (685-762 AD), the lantern market in Chang 'an was very large, with 50,000 lanterns and all kinds of lanterns. The emperor ordered 20 giant lantern buildings with a height of 150 feet, resplendent and magnificent.

Since then, the Lantern Festival has continued to develop and the time of the Lantern Festival has become longer and longer. The Lantern Festival in Tang Dynasty is "the day before and after Shangyuan". In the Song Dynasty, two days were added after the sixteenth, and in the Ming Dynasty, it was extended from the eighth day to the eighteenth day to ten days.

In the Qing Dynasty, Manchu entered the Central Plains, and the court no longer held lantern festivals, but the folk lantern festivals were still spectacular. The date was shortened to five days and continues to this day.

"Lantern riddle", also known as "playing riddles", is an activity added after the Lantern Festival, which appeared in the Song Dynasty. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Lin 'an, the capital, made riddles every Lantern Festival, and there were many people in solve riddles on the lanterns. At the beginning, it was a busybody who wrote riddles on paper and posted them on colorful lanterns for people to guess. Because riddles are enlightening and interesting, they are welcomed by all walks of life in the process of communication.

During the Tang and Song Dynasties, various acrobatic skills began to appear in the lantern market. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, besides riddles and hundreds of operas, there were also opera performances.

In addition to visiting the lantern market, people in the past dynasties also had customs such as welcoming children to visit Ce Shen, crossing the bridge and touching nails, walking away from all diseases, and playing games such as Taiping Drum, Yangko, stilts, dragon dance and lion dance. At the same time, we should also eat some festive foods: in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, we ate bean porridge or rice porridge boiled with meat and animal oil during the Lantern Festival; In the Tang dynasty, we ate a kind of pasta called "cocoon"; In the Song Dynasty, soup made of salted black beans and mung bean powder appeared, and "jiaozi" appeared. From then on, we ate Yuanxiao in the north and south of the Lantern Festival.

During the Lantern Festival, it is an opportunity for young men and women to meet their lovers, so the Lantern Festival has become the "Valentine's Day" in China.

Lantern Festival in traditional society is a folk festival that both urban and rural areas attach importance to. It is particularly lively in the city, which embodies the unique carnival spirit of China people. The traditional Lantern Festival's function of festival customs has been dispelled by daily life, and people have gradually lost their spiritual interest. The complicated holiday custom is simplified to the eating custom of "eating Yuanxiao".