中国文化 The Mid-Autumn Festival.docVIP

The Mid-Autumn Festival The Mid-Autumn Festival is the Chinese traditional festival, and it celebrated on the August 15th on the lunar. It coincides with the autumn equinox and it is the middle month of autumn, so does the name come. What’s more, the moon on this day is plenilune, indicating the reunion of families, so it also called The Reunion Day. Origin and history The earliest record of The Mid-Autumn Festival history is on The Book of Documents. It described: on The Mid-Autumn Festival, the night equal to the day and the star occur in the south. In the early year of the Dang Dynasty, the Mid-Autumn Festival became the traditional festival. The origin of the Mid-Autumn Festival has three stories. Firstly, people worshiped the moon. Secondly, there was a custom which people danced and sang to find his soul mate on this day. Thirdly, in ancient time, people sacrificed the god of the earth on this day. The Mid-Autumn Festival associated with the legend of Chang’e. According to the myth, Chang’e was the wife of HouYi. HouYi begged the immortal to give him a pill which can make people never died, but the pill was stole by Chang’e. After eating the pill, she could not stay on the ground but flied to the moon. She wanted to catch something to let her stay, so she caught the rabbit beside her hurriedly. The rabbit lived on the moon with Chang’e forever. When HouYi found Chang’e missed, he raised his head to call on the Chang’e aggrievedly, suddenly he found someone who liked Chang’e on the moon. In order to express his miss to Chang’e, he put his wife favorite moon cakes and fruit on the table. When people knew the story of Chang’e, they also put the moon cake on the table to pray Chang’e for blessing them. Hence praying for the moon became popular. Different Consuetude Sacrificing the moon is the oldest consuetude. The sacrifice places include day altar, earth altar, moon altar, sky altar; they are located in the different directions: east, west, south, and north. Thi