Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional stories - What festival is it to eat Yuanxiao?

What festival is it to eat Yuanxiao?

Eating Yuanxiao is the Lantern Festival, the fifteenth day of the first month.

The fifteenth day of the first lunar month is the Lantern Festival. Also known as Shangyuan Festival, Lantern Festival and Lantern Festival. According to legend, Emperor Wendi (179- 157) celebrated the 15th day of the first month to investigate the Zhu Lu rebellion. Every night, he goes to the palace to play with people. In ancient times, night was the same as night, and the first month was also called January. Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty designated the fifteenth day of the first month as the Lantern Festival, and this night was called Yuanxiao.

Sima Qian founded the taichu calendar, which listed the Lantern Festival as a major festival. Since the Sui, Tang and Song Dynasties, it has been in full swing. "Sui Shu Music Record" Day: "Every first month, all nations come to the DPRK and live outside the Duanmen Gate, which lasts for eight miles until the 15th." Tens of thousands of people participated in singing and dancing, from faint to dark. With the changes of society and times, the custom of Lantern Festival has changed greatly, but it is still a traditional folk festival in China.

Yuanxiao originally meant "the night of Shangyuan Festival", because the main activities of Shangyuan Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month were to eat glutinous rice balls and enjoy the moon at night, and later the name of this festival evolved into "Lantern Festival". On the night of Lantern Festival, the streets are decorated with lanterns and colorful decorations, and people enjoy lanterns, solve riddles on the lanterns and eat Lantern Festival, which pushes the celebration activities started on New Year's Eve to another climax and becomes a custom handed down from generation to generation.

Yuanxiao was only called the fifteenth day of the first month, the first half of the first month or the full moon when the early festivals were formed, and it was called Yuanxiao or Yuanxiao after Sui. Influenced by Taoism in the early Tang Dynasty, it was also called Shangyuan, but it was only in the late Tang Dynasty that it was occasionally called Yuanxiao. But since the Song Dynasty, it has also been called Dengxi. In the Qing dynasty, it was also called the Lantern Festival.