First, the introduction of the Lantern Festival Is the First Month of the Lunar Calendar, the ancients called the night "Supper", so the fifteenth day of the first month is called the Lantern Festival. The fifteenth day of the first lunar month is the first full moon night of the year, and it is also the night of the beginning of the yuan, the night of the rejuvenation of the earth, symbolizing the arrival of spring, people eat the lantern, admire the lanterns, guess the riddles, celebrate this, but also celebrate the continuation of the new spring. The Lantern Festival, also known as "Shangyuan Festival" and "Lantern Festival", is one of the most important folk festivals in Hakka, and it is also the most concentrated and colorful festival of various folk art activities in the year. In our city, the custom of making lanterns has a long history, and has formed a certain pattern so far.
Second, the history of the Lantern Festival Is China's traditional festival, as early as 2,000 years ago in the Western Han Dynasty, the Lantern Appreciation Lantern began in the Eastern Han Dynasty Ming Emperor period, the Ming Emperor advocated Buddhism, heard that Buddhism has the fifteenth day of the first month monks to view the Buddha relics, light the lamp to worship the Buddha, on this night in the palace and temples to light the lamp to worship the Buddha, so that the people of the scholar clan are hung up. Later, this Buddhist ritual festival gradually formed a grand folk festival. The festival has experienced the development process from the court to the people, from the Central Plains to the whole country. During the reign of Emperor Wen of Han, it had been ordered that the fifteenth day of the first lunar month should be designated as the Lantern Festival. During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the sacrifice of the "Taiyi God" was scheduled for the fifteenth day of the first month. (Taiyi: The god who rules over everything in the universe). When Sima Qian created the "Taichu Calendar", he had already identified the Lantern Festival as a major festival. Another theory is that the custom of lantern burning at the Lantern Festival originated from the Taoist "Three Yuan Theory"; the fifteenth day of the first month is the Shangyuan Festival, the fifteenth day of July is the Zhongyuan Festival, and the fifteenth day of October is the Lower Yuan Festival. The three officials in charge of the upper, middle and lower elements are heaven, earth, and man, and the heavenly officials are happy, so the lanterns should be lit on the first yuan festival. The festival period and customary activities of the Lantern Festival are extended and expanded with the development of history. In terms of the length of the festival, the Han Dynasty was only one day, by the Tang Dynasty it was three days, the Song Dynasty was as long as five days, and the Ming Dynasty was even more illuminated from the beginning of the eighth month until the night of the seventeenth day of the first month, a full ten days. Coinciding with the Spring Festival, the day is the city, bustling, and the lights are lit at night, which is spectacular. In particular, the exquisite and colorful lights make it the climax of entertainment activities during the Spring Festival. In the Qing Dynasty, the content of "hundred plays" such as dragon dance, lion dance, dry boat running, stilt walking, and twisting rice songs was added, but the festival period was shortened to four to five days. In addition, in some rural towns in our city, people from the twelfth day of the first month to the fifteenth, there are people celebrating the Lantern Festival. On the day of the festival, relatives of neighboring people with the same surname and the same clan all went to the zugong hall for dinner, and there were dozens of them, and at five o'clock in the afternoon, the people of the clan began to beat gongs and drums at the gate of the ancestral hall to celebrate.
These colorful and colorful Lantern Festival folk activities are a kind of cultural accumulation in the Hakka area for hundreds of years, and to a certain extent, they embody the Hakka people's social outlook, outlook on life and values. It not only enlivens the cultural life of the local people, but also becomes a carrier of the traditional Hakka spirit that can be passed on from generation to generation, and is an excellent intangible cultural heritage.
Third, the activities of the Lantern Festival 1, eat the Lantern On the fifteenth day of the first month, eat the Lantern, "Lantern" as a food, in the mainland has a long history. In the Song Dynasty, folk were popular for a novelty food eaten during the Lantern Festival. This kind of food, the earliest called "floating yuanzi" after the "Lantern", businessmen also called it "yuanbao". Lantern is the "tangyuan" with sugar, roses, sesame seeds, bean paste, yellow cinnamon, walnut kernels, nuts, date paste, etc. as the filling, wrapped in glutinous rice flour into a circle, can be meat and vegetarian, different flavors. It can be boiled, fried and steamed, which has the meaning of reunion and happiness.
2. During the Reign of Emperor Yongping of the Han Dynasty (58--75 AD), because Emperor Ming advocated Buddhism, it coincided with Cai Yan's return from India to seek the Dharma, saying that every fifteenth day of the first month in the Indian Kingdom of Mahama, monks gathered to pay homage to the Buddha's relics, which was an auspicious day to visit the Buddha. In order to promote Buddhism, Emperor Hanming ordered that the fifteenth night of the first month be "lit to watch the Buddha" in the palace and monasteries. Since then, the custom of putting lanterns on the Lantern Festival has spread to the people from the original only held in the court. That is, every fifteenth day of the first month, both the gentry and the common people must hang up the lights, and the lights in the urban and rural areas are brilliant all night. The custom of lanterns at the Lantern Festival developed into an unprecedented lantern market in the Tang Dynasty, when the capital city of Chang'an was already the world's largest city with a population of one million, and the society was rich. Under the personal initiative of the emperor, the Lantern Festival became more and more luxurious. After the Middle Tang Dynasty, it has developed into a national carnival. When Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (685-762 AD) was in the heyday of kaiyuan, the lamp market in Chang'an was very large, with 50,000 lamps burning, and there were many kinds of lanterns, and the emperor ordered people to make a huge lamp tower, which was 20 wide and 150 feet high, and the golden light was brilliant and spectacular. In the Song Dynasty, the Lantern Festival was better than the Tang Dynasty in terms of scale and the fantasy and exquisite illumination, and the activities were more folk and the national characteristics were stronger. The Lantern Lanterns of the future generations will continue to develop, and the time of the Lantern Festival will become longer and longer. In the Tang Dynasty, the lantern festival was "one day before and after the Shangyuan", the Song Dynasty added two days after the sixteenth, and the Ming Dynasty extended to ten full days from the eighth to the eighteenth day of the first century. In the Qing Dynasty, the Manchus entered the Central Plains, and the court no longer held lantern festivals, but the folk lantern festivals were still spectacular. The date was shortened to five days, which continues to this day. The lamp in Taiwan has the meaning of light and Tim Ding, lighting the lamp has the meaning of illuminating the future, and the Taiwanese lamp and the Ding harmonic sound represent the birth of boys, so in the past, women in the Lantern Festival would deliberately walk under the lamp, hoping to "drill the lamp foot to give birth to the egg" (that is, drill to the bottom of the lamp, good boy).
3, China's Valentine's Day Lantern Festival is also a romantic festival, lanterns will be in the feudal traditional society, but also to unmarried men and women to meet to provide an opportunity, traditional society of young girls are not allowed to go out of free activities, but the festival can go out to play together, lantern festival lanterns are just an opportunity for friendship, unmarried men and women through the flower lanterns can also find objects for themselves. During the Lantern Festival, it is also the time for young men and women to meet their lovers. In Taiwan, there are also unmarried women in the Lantern Night to steal onions or vegetables will marry a good husband's traditional customs, commonly known as: "stealing shallots, marrying a good widow", "stealing vegetables, marrying a good son-in-law", girls who hope to have a happy marriage, to steal onions or greens in the vegetable garden on the night of the Lantern Festival, looking forward to the happiness of the future family, the Tang Dynasty's lantern market also appeared music and dance performances, thousands of palace women, folk girls in the lights to download songs and dances, called songs, songs. Ouyang Xiu (Sheng Chazi) Yun: On The first night of last year, the flower market was full of lights; the willows on the moon were on the head, and people were about after dusk. Xin Abandoned Disease (Qingyu Case) wrote: The crowd looked for it for thousands of degrees, and looked back in the twilight, but the man was in the middle of the light. It is to describe the situation of the Lantern Night, while the traditional opera Chen San and WuNiang met at first sight during the Lantern Festival, Le Chang Gongwen and Xu Deyan broke the mirror on the Lantern Night, and Yuwen Yan and Ying Niang were engaged at the Lantern Festival in "Spring Lantern Riddle". Therefore, the Lantern Festival is also China's "Valentine's Day".
4. In addition to the celebrations, there are also religious activities. That is, the participants of "walking hundreds of diseases", also known as "roasting hundred diseases" and "scattering hundred diseases", are mostly women, who walk together or walk by the wall, or cross the bridge to walk across the suburbs, with the purpose of driving away the disease and eliminating disasters. With the passage of time, the Lantern Festival has become more and more active, and many local festivals have added activities such as playing with dragon lanterns, playing lions, stepping on stilts, rowing dry boats and twisting rice songs, and playing Taiping drums.
5. Mouse-by-mouse
This activity is mainly said to sericulture families. Because rats often eat silkworms in large areas at night, people have heard that feeding rats with rice porridge on the fifteenth day of the first month can not eat silkworms. Therefore, these people boiled a large pot of sticky porridge on the fifteenth day of the first month, and some of them also covered it with a layer of meat, put the porridge in a bowl, put it in the roof of the rat infestation, the corner of the wall, and chanted words while putting it in their mouths, cursing the rats to eat the silkworm baby again and not to die.
6, Yingzigu Zigu is a kind, poor girl in folklore. On the fifteenth day of the first month, Zigu died of poverty. The people sympathized with her, missed her, and somewhat conveniently appeared the custom of "welcoming the purple girl on the fifteenth day of the first month". Every night, people use straw, cloth heads, etc. to form life-size portraits of Zigu. The women stood next to the toilet, pigsty and kitchen where Zigu often worked to greet her, took her hand like a sister, spoke intimate words to her, and comforted her with tears, the scene was very vivid, truly reflecting the thoughts and feelings of the working people who were kind, loyal and sympathetic to the weak.