Why do we still celebrate traditional festivals today?

I. Harmonizing Heaven and Man: Closeness to Nature

So, which days were assigned by our ancestors as "festivals" on the "bamboo" of our daily life?

The days assigned as festivals are very different between the East and the West. In the West, festivals are always related to historical events, be it Christmas, Halloween, or Valentine's Day; this is not the case in China. It seems that Western festivals are negotiated between people, while Chinese festivals are negotiated between people and the sky. Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth day of the first month, the seventh day of the seventh month of July, Tanabata, the ninth day of the ninth month of September. These are "big festivals", there are also some "small festivals", such as "February 2 Dragon Heads Up", February 12 "Hundred Flowers Festival There are also some "minor festivals", such as "February 2nd Dragon Rising", February 12th "Hundred Flowers Festival", and June 6th "Sunbathing Festival", which can be celebrated or not, so it is called "No Restrictions on Minor Festivals". The July 15 festival later became a Buddhist festival, a different story.

Twelve months of the year, seasonal festivals, monthly festivals. Festivals are distributed evenly throughout the four seasons, fully reflecting the Chinese people's proximity to nature, care for life, and call for human kindness. The Chinese follow nature, but are not passive and dependent on it, and are able to do something about it, believing that it is in the hands of others to plan things and in the hands of heaven to accomplish things, the so-called "dynamic adaptation". We live, work, love and procreate according to natural rhythms, planting in spring and hoeing in summer, harvesting in autumn and storing in winter. Traditional festivals take into account the relationship between the sun, the moon, the stars, the change of seasons, the earth and human beings. Traditional Chinese festivals are the product of the conscious awareness of time of the ancestors, and are a concrete embodiment of the Chinese worldview of "unity of heaven and mankind".

By "heaven", I mean nature in general. From the festivals, the Chinese people attach great importance to the sky, to the sky, to the sky! January 1 "New Year's Day", the first year the rising sun; March 3 on the Si, the snake began to be active, let us get close to the spring water; May 5 Dragon Boat Festival, the venomous insects need to deal with the hundred feet, in order to be safe in the summer; July 7 is the festival of the stars, the Mid-Autumn Festival is the moon's festival, September 9, hiking to go, the colorful autumn mountains are the most beautiful of the year. The most beautiful thing in the year is the colorful autumn mountains. It turns out that China's festivals are all about the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the water, the spring, the summer, the fall and the winter. Yuanxiao Festival seems to be more about "personnel" some, it is a festival of lights, enough to make a fuss, but in essence, "haunted Yuanxiao" is "haunted spring plow", is a about the earth, about farming, The festival is about the earth, about farming, about the harvest, and also has a close relationship with nature.

The festivals of the year in China also emphasize the "festivals", for example, the plum blossom is the festival of the New Year, the peach blossom is the festival of the third of March (later merged with the Qingming Festival), the pomegranate flower is the festival of the Dragon Boat Festival, the osmanthus blossom belongs to the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the chrysanthemum blossom belongs to the Chrysanthemum Festival. Ancient Chinese poets of festivals, none of the festivals to describe, to sing the praises.

Another "festival" is reflected in people's food table. New Year's dumplings (northern wheat culture), rice cakes (southern rice culture), dumplings on New Year's Day, Qingming's green dumplings, Dragon Boat Festival's dumplings, Tanabata's coquettish fruits, Mid-Autumn's mooncakes, and Sept. 9's sun cakes, including Lapa congee on the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, and all of these are related to the daily food table.

"Festivals" are always seasonal, seasonal flowers, seasonal food, in fact, Mother Nature for her children to dedicate a feast - for the eyes, for the mouth, for the body and mind on both sides. Therefore, the festival also has a more emotional name called: holiday winks.

One year in late spring, our school's Xueshi Lake is "curling clear silk blowing to the idle courtyard" of the scenery, a group of boys passed by, one of them pointing to the sky fluttering willow flakes and asked: "What is this called flakes?" No one answered; another couple passed by, the man said: "Oh, dandelion!" The woman said, "Yes, dandelion!" Rather the same voice. Recently, I read in the newspaper that a middle school student wrote in his essay, "It's fall, and people are busy picking canola flowers in the ground." Rapeseed flowers bloom in spring, and they are not "picked". Our young people's ignorance of nature is staggering.

In the past, we were so close to nature, we were so respectful of it. We used to be so close to nature, so in awe of it, that when we were surprised, it was either "Oh my God" or "Oh my God". (now called "wow"), equating the sky with our mother. We call the sky "God" or "God of Heaven", "God of Heaven" when we are ready to go out for a trip, "God of Heaven" when we have a good weather, "God of Heaven" when we have a good couple, "God of Heaven" when we have a good couple, and "God of Heaven" when we have a good couple. The most vicious curse is "God damned", and the smartest one is called "genius". Lao Tzu said, "Man follows the law of the earth, the law of the earth follows the law of the sky, the law of the sky follows the law of the road, and the law of the road follows nature." How much have we learned from nature!

Nowadays, one of the key words for all mankind is "environmental protection". "Environmental protection" is not just a matter of who gets punished for discharging pollutants, there are more basic and important things to do, such as protecting our healthy traditional culture, and restoring and promoting our traditional mentality and way of life of learning from and living in harmony with nature