The origin and time of guessing lantern riddles during the Lantern Festival?

Guessing lantern riddles during the Lantern Festival is the most classic and long-standing traditional custom. "Guessing lantern riddles", also called "playing lantern riddles", is a unique form of entertainment with rich national style in my country. It is a characteristic activity of the Lantern Festival that has been spread since ancient times.

In ancient times, on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, every household would hang up lanterns and set off fireworks. Later, some good people wrote riddles on paper and pasted them on the colorful lanterns. For people to guess. Because riddles can inspire wisdom and cater to the festive atmosphere, they are deeply loved by people, and have gradually become an indispensable program during the Lantern Festival.

Guessing lantern riddles is a literary game full of ridicule, discipline, humor and laughter. It has gone through a long and long process in our country. As early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, riddles had already appeared. At that time, in order to promote their own ideas and persuade the monarchs of various countries, some "politicians" often used metaphors from traditional folk tales and legends in their speeches to make clever allusions.

At that time, this method was called "crypto" or "thin words". By the Han Dynasty, it gradually evolved into a riddle that focused on deciphering the form and meaning of characters. The riddles at this time were still relatively crude, some were created by ordinary people and some were created by literati. By the time of the Three Kingdoms, the written form of riddles was already very popular. In the Song Dynasty, riddles were combined with Lantern Festival lantern viewing.

According to records, “During the Lantern Festival, the imperial city stays up all night, and there is a lantern viewing party in the spring night, where people gather together, write poems and riddles on lanterns, reflect them on candles, and list them in the thoroughfares for anyone to guess...”, This enriched the entertainment activities of the Lantern Festival, and only then did lantern riddles appear. Through continuous development and improvement passed down from generation to generation, since then, the riddle guessing activity has fully reflected the fun, knowledge and contemporary nature.