The custom of the Cold Food Festival?

Cold Food Festival is an important folk festival in Shanxi in spring.

The specific date of the Cold Food Festival is after the winter solstice 105. At present, the day before Tomb-Sweeping Day is the day to celebrate the Cold Food Festival in most parts of Shanxi. Some places, such as Yushe County, celebrated the Cold Food Festival two days before Tomb-Sweeping Day. Yuanqu County also pays attention to Tomb-Sweeping Day's Cold Food Festival the day before, and the light cold food the day before.

The source of the Cold Food Festival should be the fire worship of the ancients. The ancients could not live without fire, but fire often brought great disasters to mankind, so the ancients thought that fire had gods and should be worshipped. The fire offered by each family must be extinguished once a year. Then rekindle a new fire, which is called changing the fire. When changing the fire, a grand ancestor worship activity should be held, and the symbol of millet, the god of cereal, should be burned, which is called human sacrifice. After the custom was passed down, it formed the later No Fire Festival.

After the fire ban, it became a cold food festival to commemorate the famous minister of Jin in the Spring and Autumn Period. Legend has it that during Jin Wengong's exile, Jiezitui once cut meat to satisfy his hunger. After Jin Wengong returned to China and proclaimed himself emperor, he forgot to push when he was enfeoffed. Jiezitui didn't want to boast about his achievements and compete for favor, so he took his mother to live in seclusion in Mianshan. Later, Jin Wengong personally went to Mianshan to find Jiezitui, who didn't want to be an official and hid in the mountains. Wen Gong's people released Yamakaji. The intention is to force mesons to show their faces. As a result, meson pushed his mother and was burned to death under a big tree. In order to commemorate this loyal minister's righteous act, he didn't make a fire to cook on the day of Jiezitui's death, but wanted to eat cold food. This is the so-called Cold Food Festival.

During the Han Dynasty, Shanxi folks banned fire for one month to commemorate it. During the Three Kingdoms period, Cao Cao, Emperor Wu of Wei, ordered the cancellation of this custom. There is a saying in Yin Penalty Order, "It is said that in Taiyuan, Shangdang and Yanmen, it is forbidden to eat cold food within 150 days after winter, and the cloud pushes it as a child" and "no one is allowed to eat cold food. Otherwise, the parents will be sentenced to half a year's imprisonment, and the chief officer will be sentenced to 100 days, and he will get a salary in January. " After the Three Kingdoms returned to Jin, because they were homophonic with Jin in the Spring and Autumn Period, they paid special attention to their stories in Jin, and the custom of banning fire and cold food in memory of meson push resumed. But the time was shortened to three days. At the same time, the idea of commemorating mesons at the Cold Food Festival was spread all over the country. The Cold Food Festival has become a national festival, and the prohibition of fire and cold food has also become the same customs and habits as the Han nationality.

Today, the folk custom of banning fire and cold food in Shanxi is mostly one day, and only a few places are used to banning fire for three days. People in southern Shanxi are used to eating bean jelly, cold noodles and cold cakes. In northern Shanxi, people are used to cooking (that is, steamed cake noodles or white noodles are cut into dice-sized squares, then dried and fried with earth) as food for the Cold Food Festival. In some mountainous areas, the whole family eats fried noodles on this day (that is, stir-fry whole grains, mix various dried fruits and grind them into noodles).

The Cold Food Festival is celebrated by steaming cold swallows. Flour is kneaded into swallows, songbirds, animals, melons and fruits, flowers, etc. The steamed swallows are colored, inserted into the needles of jujube trees, decorated indoors and given as gifts.