During the Qingming Festival, there are lots of rain, and people on the road want to die. Every year's Qingming Festival is a day for many people who travel abroad to visit their relatives and visit their graves. But many people easily confuse cold food festival with Qingming Festival. What's the difference between the two festivals?
Is cold food festival Qingming Festival
Hanshi 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 a new fire after the cold food is a kind of transitional ceremony to say goodbye 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, there was a sense of "gratitude" and more emphasis on the memory and gratitude of the "past". No cold food, no fire, no cold food, no tomb sacrifice.
Qingming Festival, also known as the Tomb Sweeping Festival, ghost festival and Ghost Festival, is related to offering sacrifices to ghosts and gods. And it has a history of more than 2500 years. At the same time, Qingming Festival, also known as the outing Festival, according to the Gregorian calendar, it is between April 4 and 6 every year. It is a time of beautiful spring, when plants and trees turn green. It is also a good time for people to have a spring outing (called outing in ancient times). Therefore, the ancients had the custom of Qingming outing and carrying out a series of sports activities. There are visits to tombs, no smoking, ancestor worship, tree planting, swing, flower appreciation, chicken fighting, banquet, cold food, willow planting, outing, Cuju, poetry chanting and so on.
Cold food festival, also known as' no smoking Festival ',' cold Festival 'and' Baiwu Festival ', is 105 days after the lunar winter solstice and one or two days before Qingming Festival. At the beginning of the day, fireworks are forbidden and only cold food is eaten. Before Sui and Tang Dynasties, 'Qingming Festival' was only one of the 24 festivals that distinguished the alternation of seasons and the operation of farming. The main item of cold food festival was to ban smoking and eat cold food, and it was in the cold winter. Because the time is close to the Qingming Festival and influenced by it, the customs of offering sacrifices to sweeping, outing, swing, Cuju, pulling hook, fighting eggs and so on gradually increased in the development of later generations. The cold food festival lasted for more than 2000 years and was known as the first memorial day among the people.
The difference between Hanshi Festival and Qingming Festival
1、 Different functions:
When the Qingming Festival comes, the cold food festival also comes with it. Now, it is wrong for some people to confuse cold food with Qingming. Because the two are farming solar terms and folk festivals, which are not the same thing. Qingming is one of the 24 solar terms in the Chinese lunar calendar, usually around the fourth or fifth day of April in the Gregorian calendar. Cold food is a folk festival, originated in the spring and Autumn period, Jin Wengong Chong'er minister Jie Zhi Tui Ning was burned to death, Shanxi Jiexiu Mianshan, also refused to go down the mountain to be granted. 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 on one day, so it is said that Qingming and Hanshi are both called.
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 was seeking new life; one Yin and one Yang had a close relationship with each other. The purpose of banning fire is to produce fire, and the purpose of sacrificing death is to protect life. This is the internal cultural connection between cold food and Qingming. In the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, the imperial court fixed the custom of tomb sweeping in the form of government decrees on the cold food festival before the Qingming Festival. Because cold food and Qingming are closely related in time, the custom of cold food festival has been associated with the Qingming Festival for a long time, and tomb sweeping has been extended from cold food to Qingming.
The evolution of the relationship between Qingming and Hanshi
One is the unrelated stage: before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, 'Qingming Festival' only refers to one of the 24 seasons that distinguish the alternation of seasons and the operation of farming. The main project of cold food festival is to ban smoking and eat cold food, and the time is in the cold winter season.
The second is the stage of mutual integration: in the Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties, the time of cold food festival was determined to be on the '150' day after the winter solstice, only one or two days ahead of the Qingming Festival, and the content of 'cold food going to the tomb, gradually becoming a custom, being allowed to go to the tomb and paying homage to the tomb' 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, gradually weakened, 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 altars and royal mausoleums became the main activities of the festival. During this period, although the name "Hanshi" appeared from time to time in some documents, local chronicles and literary works, the title "Qingming" became the mainstream. Qingming Festival originated from Hanshi Festival. Hanshi was only one or two days before Qingming, so it was naturally borrowed by the latter. The cultural basis of this borrowing is people's habitual psychology of years and seasons inherited and accumulated from generation to generation.