spring is coming, and soon it will be Qingming Festival. Qingming Festival is one of the four traditional festivals in China. Qingming Festival has the custom of offering sacrifices to ancestors and sweeping tombs, which is the largest Memorial Day in ancient China. But in ancient times, there was not only Qingming Festival but also cold food festival. Is cold food festival Qingming Festival? What is the relationship between cold food festival and Qingming Festival? What are the differences? Let's talk about the relationship and difference between cold food festival and Qingming Festival. Let's learn about the medieval traditional festivals.
Is cold food festival Qingming Festival
Cold food festival is not Qingming Festival. It was originally two festivals with different meanings. Qingming Festival is an important folk traditional festival in China. It is one of the eight important festivals: Shangyuan, Qingming, Lixia, Dragon Boat Festival, Zhongyuan, Mid Autumn Festival, winter solstice and new year's Eve. The cold food festival is related to the ancients' understanding of nature. In China, the rebirth of new fire after cold food is a transitional ceremony to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new. It reveals the information of the alternation of seasons and symbolizes the beginning of a new season, new hope, new life and new cycle. Later, it had the meaning of "gratitude", emphasizing the remembrance and gratitude of the "past". Cold food forbids fire, cold food is sacrificed to the tomb, and Qingming takes a new fire for an outing.
Qingming Festival, also known as Tomb Sweeping Festival, ghost festival and Ghost Festival, is jointly called Sanming Festival, which is related to sacrificing ghosts and gods. And it has a history of more than 2500 years. At the same time, the Qingming Festival, also known as the outing Festival, according to the Gregorian calendar, it is between April 4 and 6 every year. It is the season of beautiful spring and green plants, and it is also a good time for people's spring outing (called outing in ancient times). Therefore, the ancients had the custom of going outing during the Qingming Festival and carrying out a series of sports activities. There are tomb sweeping and exhibition, smoking prohibition, ancestor worship, tree planting, swing, flower appreciation, cockfighting, banquet feeding, cold food, willow planting, outing, Cuju, poetry chanting, etc.
The cold food festival, also known as the 'no smoking Festival', 'cold Festival' and 'hundred and five Festival', is one or two days before the Qingming Festival and 105 days after the winter solstice of the lunar calendar. At the beginning of the day, fireworks are forbidden and only cold food is eaten. Before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, 'Qingming Festival' only refers to one of the twenty-four festivals that distinguish between seasonal alternation and agricultural operation. The main project of the cold food festival is to ban smoking and eat cold food at home, and the time is in the cold winter season. Because it is close to the Qingming Festival in time and affected by it, customs such as sweeping, outing, swing, Cuju, holding hook and egg fighting have been gradually added in the development of later generations. The cold food festival lasts for more than 2000 years, which is known as the largest Memorial Day among the people.
The difference between cold food festival and Qingming Festival
1、 Different functions:
When the Qingming Festival comes, the cold food festival also comes with it. Now, some people confuse cold food with Qingming, which is actually wrong. Because the two are farming solar terms and folk festivals, they are not the same thing. Qingming is one of the twenty-four solar terms in the Chinese lunar calendar, usually around April 4 and 5 of the Gregorian calendar. Cold food is a folk festival. It originated from the story that Jie Zhining, a minister of Duke Wen Chonger of Jin, was burned to death on Mianshan mountain in Jiexiu, Shanxi Province, and refused to go down the mountain to be sealed. One is farming solar terms, the other is allusions and folk customs, which are two different things; However, the two festivals are one or two days apart, or even coincide with one day, so there is a saying that Qingming and cold food are called together.
2、 Different cultural connotations
Before the Tang Dynasty, cold food and Qingming were two successive festivals with different themes. The former was nostalgic and mourning, while the latter sought new nursing students; One Yin and one Yang, one breath for a lifetime, the two have a close cooperative relationship. Banning fire is to make fire, and sacrificing death is to protect life. This is the internal cultural relationship between cold food and Qingming. During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, the imperial court fixed the custom of folk tomb sweeping in the form of a decree on the cold food festival before the Qingming Festival. Because the cold food and the Qingming Festival were closely linked in time, the cold food festival custom had long been associated with the Qingming Festival, and tomb sweeping was also extended from the cold food to the Qingming Festival.
Evolution of the relationship between Qingming Festival and cold food
First, there is no correlation stage: before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, 'Qingming Festival' only refers to one of the 24 festivals that distinguish between seasonal alternation and agricultural operation. The main project of the cold food festival is to ban smoking and eat cold food at home, and the time is in the cold winter season.
The second is the mutual blending stage: during the Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties, the time of the cold food festival was determined on the '150' day after the winter solstice, only one or two days before the Qingming Festival, and the content of "cold food going to the tomb, gradually becoming popular, it is advisable to go to the tomb and pay a visit to the same ceremony" was added.
Third, the Qingming Festival gradually replaced the cold food festival: with the passage of time, the cold food festival gradually began to be replaced by the Qingming Festival because the main item of the cold food festival - smoking and cold food was gradually weakened. By the Qing Dynasty, some popular items of cold food festival were no longer popular, and folk tomb sweeping, official altars and royal tombs became the main activities of the festival. During this period, although the name "cold food" still appeared from time to time in some documents, local chronicles and literati works, the title "Qingming" became the mainstream. The emergence of the Qingming Festival borrowed the festival period of the cold food festival. The cold food was only one or two days before the Qingming Festival, so it was naturally borrowed by the latter. The cultural basis of this borrowing is people's habitual psychology of years and festivals inherited and accumulated from generation to generation.