The festival of Tanabata, has any special meaning?

In the first few years of reform and opening up, a festival in Xiyi blew through the streets of our country with a gust of sea breeze and into the hearts of young people. Lovers in February 14th this day, give each other flowers, chocolates and other gifts to express love, celebrate love; in memory of a monk called Valentine, this day is Valentine's day, the Chinese called "Valentine's Day".

After a few years, another Valentine's Day crept up on people, the traditional Chinese festival of Tanabata. It's one of the more obscure holidays, so obscure that people don't even know how it got there.

We know that every holiday has specific customs: for example, Westerners celebrate Christmas with family and friends, decorating Christmas trees and dressing up as Santa Claus. Chinese people also have family and friends reunion on Spring Festival, firecrackers, eat dumplings; the first month of the 15th to eat Lantern Festival; August 15th to eat mooncakes; Dragon Boat Festival to eat rice dumplings. So what do you eat on Tanabata? I don't know~~ What are the traditional activities on Tanabata? Still don't know~~ According to my search from the Internet, there are sporadic temple fairs on Tanabata, but none of the people I know have ever attended one. These sporadic temple fairs neither exclude lovers nor have much to do with them.

If Tanabata is a traditional festival, what makes it continue to this day would be the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaveress. Behind every festival, there is a legend or allusion, and Western Valentine's Day is no exception. Legend has it that in Rome in the third century A.D., there was a king who went so far as to forbid his citizens from marrying in order to secure soldiers. Western weddings were officiated by friars, and right in the capital of Rome, there was a highly respected friar who defied the king's ban and secretly held marriage ceremonies for pairs of young couples. The uplifting news spread quickly through Rome and, unfortunately, also reached the king's ears. The king had the friar thrown into a heavenly prison and eventually tortured to death. The day the friar was killed was February 14, 270 AD.

More than a thousand years have passed since then, and the king has long since gone to hell, and "people can no longer remember his scepter and sword," but people will always remember the friar who dared to fight against the powers that be, and his name was Valentine (Valentine), and February 14th is Valentine's Day, which has gradually become today's Valentine's Day. The day gradually became today's Valentine's Day.

Let's take a look at the story of Valentine's Day in China, where is our Valentine? Who is the Valentine of China in our history books? Who has fought against power and even risked their lives for love? I think there are still some, but people did not sympathize with him as the Romans did, but forgot about him. Imagine if the story of Valentine happened in ancient China, with our traditional thinking, who would praise him? Who would have erected a monument in his honor? Wouldn't the people who were helped by him have knelt down and kowtowed to the king? He is more likely to be treated as a rebel and die alone, leaving his grave full of weeds, disappearing into the river of history, who will remember him? We will only remember the wise and mighty king who reigned supreme and was admired by all for generations to come. And of course we can't have our own Valentine's Day.

Shen Yao (441-513 A.D.), a Liang literati of the Southern Dynasty, wrote the poem "The Weaving Maiden Presents the Altair". Again, it's been more than a thousand years, which dynasty and which generation has taken the Tanabata as a Valentine's Day? Which dynasty or which generation of Chinese people regarded the pursuit of love and personal happiness as natural and righteous? For more than a thousand years, the Tanabata Festival did not have the custom of exchanging gifts between lovers, there is no tradition of expressing love, even those sporadic temple fairs, but also and Western Valentine's Day customs are very different, that the temple fair is not a wedding fellowship, and it can be said that there is not much to do with the lovers. Tanabata is Tanabata, with the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden, but without the reality of Valentine's Day.Valentine's Day Why don't you call it "Valentine's Day" and translate it into "Valentine's Day"? I don't know what kind of people transformed Tanabata into the so-called Valentine's Day, and I don't want to speculate that people have ulterior motives for no reason. Rome has produced a friar who has been celebrated for centuries, while China, an ancient civilization with thousands of years of splendid culture and civilization, has not conceived a Valentine's Day of its own. Western Valentine's Day carries the spirit of celebrating love and pursuing happiness without fear of power. Reflecting the firm and righteous morality of the Roman folk, more than a thousand years have passed, and no one remembers the birthday of the great king, but the story of Friar Valentine has been celebrated for generations, and has become a festival for people in pursuit of love and happiness. Why doesn't China have one?

Shouldn't we wonder if our ancestors, our traditions, ever honored love? Did they really pursue happiness? China's Valentine, did he really exist? What could he have done? What happened to him? Did the people he helped appreciate him? Did he really leave behind a piece of paper or a grave?

What else are we going to do, other than to make Tanabata, which is not a Valentine's Day, into Valentine's Day?

Attachment: Legend of Tanabata

Legend has it that in ancient times, there was a bitter cowherd called Ling'er, who was abetted by the Gray Cow Immortal one day, and ran under the tea-bean shelf to peep at the nymphs bathing. One of them was called the Weaving Maiden, who was very pretty, with the face of an angel and the body of a devil. Spirit is a just developed young man, that year and there is no posting site, and has not been "sitting in the arms of not chaotic" and other advanced deeds of education, he can not be moved? Only a glance on the dead heart in love with the weaver. The weaver is a big girl in love, the spirit of this little handsome man is also love at first sight, did not mind that he is a penniless mortal body cattle ranchers, the two people one to two on the good.

The young couple became a family after the love, the days of the village are envious, but also gave birth to a pair of twins. "People do not have a thousand days of good, flowers do not have a hundred days of red". Pity the third year of July 7, disaster from heaven! There is a bully's wife in the sky called the Queen Mother, this day the Queen Mother does not know which tendon is wrong, suddenly came down to the earth to kidnap the Weaving Maiden, fleeing to the sky. Ling'er was furious and chased after her with her two children. The Queen Mother then used her magic to draw a Milky Way, blocking the Spirit's father and son. From then on, a good family of four was separated by the Queen Mother for no reason. The Jade Emperor, knowing that his wife had done such a wicked and smoky thing, and fearing to be scolded by the world, decided to invite magpies to build a bridge on the seventh day of the seventh month of every year, so that the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden could have a one-day family reunion.

The Tanabata stories and customs of the time, showing that it was just an autumn festival, Tanabata story implies the significance of the change of season, the beginning of the fall of the news, despite the lingering, poignant love story, but Tanabata is the beginning of love has nothing to do. Tanabata, as the first festival of autumn, opened the prelude to autumn, and the drama of autumn is always a sad tragedy, the autumn winds, the prosperity of the fall, everything is depressed, sad, therefore, Tanabata is not the lover's festival, rather than a sad day, rather than a day to make the world's lovers are married, rather than a day since the ancient sentimental sad parting of the day. Tanabata is not the season of love, therefore, in the concept of the ancients, Tanabata for marriage, is not an auspicious day, the love of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden, and there is no meaning of the moon and flowers. Hubei Yunmeng sleep tiger unearthed in the Qin dynasty divination book "day book A kind of" on the Cowherd and Weaving Maiden as accounted for the entry, a said: "Ding ugly, hexagrams to take a wife, unlucky. Wushen, hexiyou, take the cow to take the weaving maiden, not fruitful, three abandoned." Another article says: "Wushen, hexiyou, take the cow to take the weaving maiden and not fruitful, not out of three years old, abandoned if dead." Visible, in the minds of the ancients, the Tanabata story, for love and marriage, was originally a lot of bad luck, "the next lot", is not allowed to draw.

Nowadays, people speculate on the concept of Valentine's Day, one of the reasons is to fight against the Western Valentine's Day, the intention can be said to be good, however, the Tanabata as a Valentine's Day, can be said to be forgetting their ancestors. In order to respond to the impact of foreign "revival" of tradition, local consciousness, but had to refer to foreign culture and re-interpretation of tradition, so that the "tradition" has become a poor imitation of foreign culture. In fact, China originally had its own Valentine's Day, which, like St. Valentine's Day in the West, was celebrated not in the fall but in the spring. In ancient times, including the spring equinox, flower dynasty, spring society, Qingming, on the spring festival, etc., in addition to its unique and agricultural, sacrificial rituals related to the ritual content, is not a flavor of love festival, not to mention that since ancient times those who sang on the spring festival of the poems exposed to the boundless wind and moon, turning over the Song and Ming books, Yuan theater, those sentimental lovers almost none of them on the spring festival, the playground, trekking in spring! The game field of Qingming Shangsi, trekking in the spring, love at first sight, private life. In the final analysis, everything is in full bloom, shaking the spirit of spring is the breeding season of love.