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What is the relationship between cold food festival and Qingming Festival? What's the difference bet

during the Qingming Festival, there is a lot of rain and passers-by are dying. Every year, the Qingming Festival is a day for many tourists to visit their relatives and visit their tombs. It has been a very important festival since ancient times, but many people easily confuse the Qingming Festival with the cold food festival. What is the difference between the two festivals? What is the relationship between the Qingming Festival and the cold food festival? Who is the cold food festival set up to commemorate?

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 traditional folk festival in China. It is one of the eight important festivals: Shangyuan, Qingming, Lixia, Dragon Boat Festival, Zhongyuan, mid autumn, winter solstice and new year's Eve. 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 of saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new, which reveals the information of season alternation, symbolizing the beginning of new season, new hope, new life and new cycle. Later, it had the meaning of "gratitude" and emphasized the memory and gratitude of "the past". Cold food, no fire, cold food, sacrifice to the tomb. During the Qingming Dynasty, take a new fire and go outing.

Qingming Festival, also known as the Tomb Sweeping Festival, ghost festival and Ming Festival, is related to the sacrifice of ghosts and gods, together with the mid-term festival of July 15 and the next Yuan Festival of October 15. And it's more than 2500 years old. At the same time, Qingming Festival, also known as the outing Festival, according to the solar calendar, it is between April 4 and 6 every year, which is the time when the plants and trees are green in the bright spring, and it is also a good time for people to spring outing (ancient called outing), so the ancients have the custom of Qingming outing and carry out a series of sports activities. There are tomb visits, no smoking, ancestor worship, tree planting, swing, flower watching, cockfighting, banquet, cold food, willow planting, outing, Cuju, poetry chanting and so on.

Cold food festival, also known as "no smoking Festival", "cold Festival" and "hundred and five Festival", is one hundred and five days after the winter solstice of the lunar calendar and one or two days before the Qingming Festival. It is the beginning of the day when the festival, no fireworks, only eat cold food. Before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, "Qingming Festival" only refers to one of the 24 seasons that distinguish between seasonal alternation and agricultural operation. The main item of the cold food festival is that families are not allowed to smoke and eat cold food, and the time is in the cold winter season. Due to the close time and influence of Qingming Festival, the customs of sacrifice and sweeping, outing, swing, Cuju, lead hook, fighting eggs and so on have been gradually increased in the development of later generations. The cold food festival stretches for more than 2000 years before and after, which is known as the largest folk day of sacrifice.

The difference between cold food festival and Qingming Festival

I. different functions:

When the Qingming Festival comes, the cold food festival comes with it. Now, some people confuse cold food with Qingming, which is actually wrong. Because one is the solar term of farming, the other is the folk festival, which is not the same thing. Qingming is one of the 24 solar terms in the Chinese lunar calendar, generally around April 4 and 5. Cold food is a folk festival. It originated from the story that Jie zhidining, a minister of the Jin Wengong in the spring and Autumn period, was burned to death on the Mianshan mountain in Jiexiu, Shanxi Province, and refused to go down the mountain to be sealed. The two are agricultural solar terms and allusions, which are different things. However, the two festivals are one or two days apart, or even coincide in one day, so they are called Qingming and cold food.

2. Different cultural connotations

Before the Tang Dynasty, cold food and Qingming were two successive festivals with different themes. The former was nostalgic and mournful, while the latter was seeking new things to protect their lives; the two had a close relationship. The purpose of fire prohibition is to produce fire, and the purpose of sacrifice is to protect life. This is the internal cultural connection 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 decrees in the cold food festival before the Qingming Festival. Because the cold food is closely related to the Qingming Festival in time, the cold food festival custom has long been related to the Qingming Dynasty, and the tomb sweeping has also been extended from cold food to the Qingming Dynasty.

The relationship between Qingming and cold food

First, there was no correlation: before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, 'Qingming Festival' was only one of the twenty-four seasons to distinguish between seasonal alternation and agricultural operation. The main item of cold food festival was the family's non-smoking and cold food, and the time was in the cold winter.

The second is the mutual blending stage: in the Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties, the time of cold food festival was determined to be one or two days before the Qingming Festival when the "one hundred and five" days after the winter solstice, and the content of "cold food on tomb, gradually becoming popular, appropriate to allow on tomb, and the same worship ceremony" was added.

Third, the Qingming Festival gradually replaced the cold food festival: with the passage of time, as the main item of the cold food festival - no smoking and cold food, it was gradually diluted, and the cold food festival gradually began to be replaced by the Qingming Festival. By the Qing Dynasty, some popular items of cold food festival were no longer popular, and folk tomb sweeping, official altar and royal mausoleum were the main activities of the festival. In this period, although the name "cold food" appeared in some documents, local chronicles and literary works from time to time, the title "Qingming" became the mainstream. The Qingming Festival originated from the cold food festival, which 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 festivals and festivals inherited and accumulated from generation to generation.