What's the significance of Lantern Festival?

The first month is January, and the ancients called the night "Xiao". The fifteenth day is the first full moon night in a year, so the fifteenth day of the first month is called the Lantern Festival. Also known as "Shangyuan Festival".

According to the folk tradition in China, the moon is high in the sky and there are 10,000 lanterns on the ground on the festival night of Spring Festival, so people can watch lanterns, solve riddles on the lanterns, eat Yuanxiao and have family reunion. ? 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".

Push the celebration that began on New Year's Eve to another climax. On the night of Lantern Festival, the streets are decorated with lanterns and people appreciate them. Solve riddles on the lanterns and eating Yuanxiao have become the customs of several generations.

Extended data:

The formation of Lantern Festival custom has a long process, and attention has been paid to the fifteenth day of the first month since the Western Han Dynasty. However, the fifteenth day of the first month really became a folk festival after the Han and Wei Dynasties. The introduction of Buddhist culture in the Eastern Han Dynasty is of great significance to the formation of Lantern Festival customs.

During the reign of Yong Ping in Han Dynasty (AD 58-75), when Ming Chengzu advocated Buddhism, it happened that Cai Cheng returned from India to seek Buddhism, saying that it was an auspicious day to participate in Buddhism when monks gathered to pay tribute to relics on the fifteenth day of the first month in Mohamad, India. In order to carry forward Buddhism, Emperor Han Ming ordered "burning lamps to show Buddha" in the palace temple on the 15th night of the first month.

Therefore, the custom of burning lanterns on the fifteenth night of the first month, with the expansion of the influence of Buddhist culture and the addition of Taoist culture, gradually spread in China. Nowadays, with the development of the times, today's Lantern Festival is moving from family to society. No matter how the Lantern Festival, lanterns and fireworks change, the ancient traditional customs that the Lantern Festival continues remain unchanged. These elements of traditional culture are always the feelings that people keep giving up.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Lantern Festival