What festival is Diwali?

Lantern Festival is a traditional folk festival in China. The custom of "putting lanterns on" began in the Han Dynasty and is very popular in Guangdong and Guangxi. Now, it has been going on in eastern Guangxi and some parts of Guangdong, such as Cenxi, tengxian, Rongxian, Fuchuan and Guiping in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, especially the "Shangyuan Festival" held in Cenxi, Guangxi.

Usually, the Lantern Festival lasts for five days and is divided into three steps. Lantern Festival starts from the first day of the first month 10, and lights are warmed up from the tenth day to the sixteenth day of the first month, and lights are turned off on the sixteenth day of the first month. In some areas, lights are turned on on the ninth or eleventh or twelfth or thirteenth day of the first month, and lights are turned off on the fifteenth or sixteenth day of the first month.

The origin of Lantern Festival

In Cantonese, "Shang" means "Xing" and "Deng" means "Ding", which continues the meaning of incense. Therefore, the birth of a boy is also called Tianding, which is homophonic for "adding lights", commonly known as "lighting". "Lighting a lamp" is equivalent to telling others or ancestors that they have added a man, continued the incense and made a fortune.

"Lighting" is also called the champion lamp. There are clouds covering the mid-autumn moon in Cenxi, and the rain sprinkles the champion lamp. Before the Qing Dynasty in China, only men could take the imperial examinations and win the first place, while girls could only stay in boudoir.

Therefore, for thousands of years, on the tenth day of the first month of the second year after the boy was born, his family would hold a "lighting ceremony" for him, praying that the boy would be happy all his life and come back to worship his ancestors after he passed the examination for fame. If a boy is born before the tenth day of the first month, the lights will not be hung until the tenth day of the first month of the following year. This is the so-called "putting old lights away".