What does Tomb-Sweeping Day mean?

Tomb-Sweeping Day embodies the national spirit, inherits the sacrificial culture of Chinese civilization, and expresses people's moral feelings of respecting and honoring their ancestors.

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 Development and Evolution of Tomb-Sweeping Day

Tomb-Sweeping Day is the Spring Festival of the Chinese nation, and the Spring Festival in Tomb-Sweeping Day corresponds to the Autumn Festival of Chongyang and the Spring Festival in Spring and Autumn, which has existed since ancient times. Tomb-Sweeping Day has a long history, which changes with the development of the times. Later, it gradually merged the customs of Cold Food Festival and Shangsi Festival. In ancient times, the north and south of China had different customs. Before the Tang Dynasty, grave sweeping in northern China was mainly held in Cold Food Festival and Cold Clothes Festival.

According to the Book of Rites and other documents, before the Tang Dynasty, there was no provision for Tomb-Sweeping Day to sweep graves in northern China, but in the Tang Dynasty, it became a trend for Tomb-Sweeping Day to sweep graves. The Tang Dynasty was a period of integration of the sacrificial customs of tombs in the north and the south, which followed the sacrificial customs of tombs in the Qingming period and spread to all parts of the country.

After the Tang Dynasty, the Cold Food Festival gradually declined, because it was similar to Tomb-Sweeping Day. During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Tomb-Sweeping Day's position in all parts of the country rose, and the custom of forbidding fire and cold food was incorporated into the cold food festival.

Refer to the above? Baidu Encyclopedia-Tomb-Sweeping Day