The Significance of the Mid-Autumn Festival

Oct 8

By Zeka

The Mid-Autumn Festival, also called the Moon Festival or Mooncake Festival, is predominantly a harvest festival practiced in the Chinese tradition. The festival is more-or-less celebrated roughly in the 15th day of the 8th month of Chinese lunisolar calendar with full moon night or mid –September to early October in western calendar. On that day, it is believed that the moon is round like a gourd and also believes to be harvesting time in the middle of autumn. Among the Chinese people, the Mid-Autumn Festival is regarded as one of the most important and most number of holidays celebrated in this culture possibly wherever Chinese live Chinese New year in most places of which this festival can recently be traced back Over Three Thousand years ago. Similar festivities exist in some other cultures of eastern and south eastern Asia. Throughout the festival, kids and adults alike bring and showcase various kinds and shapes of lanterns which are interpreted as Kevin Harris beacons in terms of lighting one’s way towards prosperity and good luck. During this festival, it has been the tradition to eat moon cakes which are a rich pastry stuffed with sweet-bean, egg yolk, meat, or lotus-seed paste. The Mid-Autumn Festival has its origins in the tale of Chang’e, the Chinese legend’s goddess of the Moon.

Meanings

The festival has three roots which have a deep interconnection with each other.

Gathering: It includes families bringing together or bringing in the crops for the festival. On this day, it is said, the Moon shines at its brightest and roundest; in other words, the family is together. That is why this particular celebration is regarded as important.

Giving thanks: Activities like sharing mooncakes for example, done to appreciate for the harvest, or the beautiful relationships.

Praying (as in, desire conceptual/materiel satisfaction through offerings and worship): It involves praying for children, another half, exquisite beauty, long life and health, or a great future.

Traditions and myths encompassing the festival are built on these concepts as well as traditions have evolved due to change in the technology, science, economy, culture, and religion.

Celebration

The festival was a period when the people got to celebrate the wonderful harvest of rice and grains while offerings were also made to the moon. As for now, it is still an opportunity to gather physically with one’s relatives and friends for eating moon cakes and gazing at the moon, which represents peace and integrity. Such a day in the course of a solar eclipse is cut short since it is customary that such regions as all government offices, the bank, all schools should close additional working days to maximize the enjoyment of the holiday for as long as possible. The festival has a lot of traditional practices, or, as in this case, it’s the reason for the waves of culture and/or regions:

Lanterns

It also involves carrying lanterns with bright lights, lighting lanterns on towers, or even floating sky lanterns. The other activity involves writing riddles on the lantern and allowing other people to guess the answer. It is difficult to tell what the first purpose of the lanterns in relation to the festival was, but one thing is sure: that lanterns were not used together with Moon-worship before the Tang dynasty. Traditionally, the lantern has been used to symbolize fertility and functioned mainly as a toy and decoration. But today, the lantern has come to symbolize the festival itself. Lanterns during those times were created in resemblance to natural things, myth, and local culture. As time reeled on, there could be found more and more varieties of the lantern since the cultures of the locals were influenced by their neighbors.

Traditions from other festivals, such as putting lanterns on the rivers to guide the spirits of the drowned practiced during the Ghost Festival, which is observed a month before, began to be transmitted into the Mid-Autumn Festival as China gradually evolved from an agrarian society to a mixed agrarian-commercial one. Hong Kong fishermen in the Qing dynasty used to hang lanterns onto their boats to celebrate Ghost Festival and didn't take them down until Mid-Autumn Festival.

Mooncakes

One of the most popular traditions in the festival is to make mooncakes and distribute them to others. According to Chinese tradition, roundness signifies completeness and reunion. Because of that reason, round mooncakes are distributed and shared among family members during the festival week, to express the completeness and reunions of families. Some people in regions of China have a tradition that mooncake-making would be carried out in every family on the Mid-Autumn Festival night. The mooncakes would be cut into pieces by a senior member of that household and distributed to each member, indicating family reunion. However, nowadays making mooncakes at home has given way to the more popular tradition of giving mooncakes to family members, though the meaning of maintaining familial unity remains intact. While common mooncakes usually range in diameter from a few centimeters, imperial chefs have been known to make versions up to 8 meters in diameter with its surface stamped with patterns of Chang'e, cassia trees, or the Moon-Palace. One tradition is to pile 13 mooncakes on top of each other to resemble a pagoda, the number 13 being selected because it represents the 13 months in a whole Chinese lunisolar year. This scene of making extremely large mooncakes has continued to this date in modern China.

According to the Chinese folklore, Turpan businessman presented cakes to Emperor Taizong of Tang in his victory against the Xiongnu on the fifteenth day of the eighth Chinese lunisolar month. Smiling, Taizong pointed to the moon and said, "I'd like to invite the toad to enjoy the hú cake." He then distributed the round cakes to his ministers, and from then on the tradition of eating hú cakes on Mid-Autumn Night spread throughout the land, eventually acquiring the name "mooncakes.". Although the above legend explains the origins of mooncake-giving, its popularity and association with the festival began during the Song dynasty. Another popular legend relates to the Han Chinese's rebellion against the ruling Mongols at the end of the Yuan dynasty, in which traditional mooncakes were used to conceal the message that they were to rise on Mid-Autumn Day. Due to the strict controls that the Mongols had placed upon the Han Chinese families, wherein only 1 household in every 10 was allowed to own a knife which should be guarded by a Mongolian, this unanimous message was important as a way to gather whatever weapons were available.

Mid-Autumn Festival Facts

1. Mid-Autumn Festival falls on a different date each year.

It falls on the 15th day of the 8th month in the Chinese calendar. The exact date changes annually according to the Gregorian calendar, but normally it falls in September or October.

2. The travel peak was during the 3-day public holiday.

There is only one day of public holiday for the festival. This simply means if it falls on Wednesday, then people enjoy only one day off from work, while if it doesn't fall on Wednesday, the Chinese may enjoy a three-day holiday by adding weekends to it. Like any other holidays, it provokes a travel peak, when people go home, reunite with their families, or take a short trip with friends and relatives. There will be plenty of tourists in popular scenic spots, roads will be highly congested, and the train tickets are sold out in advance. When there is a coincidence with the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day holiday in the same week, an eight-day holiday can be made. The longest public holiday of the year means more serious congestion and even greater travel demands. If you want to travel to China during the holidays, make sure you reserve and make your preparations well in advance.

3. Mid-Autumn Festival ranks as the second most important festival in China, second only to the Chinese New Year.

What does the Mid-Autumn Festival mean for Chinese people? For Chinese far away from their hometowns, their chances to return home and reunite with their families come only twice a year, once on Chinese New Year in the first half of a year and the other on the Mid-Autumn Festival in the latter half. On the day of the festival, all the members will go out of the house to appreciate the moon and eat mooncakes together. Different celebratory activities include the activity of lantern shows among others, and with southern China, the activities relating to the lanterns are more grand in occasion.

4. The full moon doesn't fall on the night of Middle Autumn every year.

That is a scientifically-based Mid-Autumn Festival fact. Full moon can also fall on 14th, 16th, and 17th day of the lunar month. It comes about because the length of a day is governed by solar movement, and the phases of the moon do not coincide precisely, hence accounting for the fact that sometimes the moon can be seen during daylight hours. According to the laws of astronomy, the new moon is always on the first day of a lunar month, but it may appear in the early morning or in the evening of the first day. The time span from the new moon to the full moon is shorter than 15 days. Hence, if the new moon falls in the early hours of the first day, then the full moon will appear on 15th day or even 14th day. If it is late, you will see the full moon in the sixteenth day sometimes even in the seventeenth day.

5. Goddess Chang E flew to the moon.

Well, here is an interesting Mid-Autumn Festival fact, or rather a legend about its very origin. According to it, there lived a hero called Hou Yi, who got a magical potion, and any person taking some would immediately become a god or goddess able to fly up to Heaven. He handed over the potion to his wife Chang E for safekeeping. One day, while Hou Yi was away from home, Peng Meng, an evil fellow, marched into the house with his sword and asked Chang E to give him the elixir of immortality. For fear that it might fall into his hands, she swallowed it. Immediately she felt herself becoming lighter and lighter and starting to rise into the air, just like a gas balloon. Being worried about her husband, she flew to the moon, which was the closest heavenly body from Earth. Hou Yi was so grieved that, at full moon night, he sacrificed Cheng E's favorite food in memory of his wife. This custom gradually spread into folklore.

6. Colorful lanterns during festivals are liked by children.

Making and hanging lanterns is also a custom of Mid-Autumn Festival. It is especially popular in the south of China, where usually the activity of lighting up the lanterns is done in a very grand way. Different handcrafted paper lanterns are extremely popular with children. Lanterns are also made of pomelos, pumpkins, oranges, and tiles.

References

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