#Earliest origin of midautumn festival full

Before the Mid-Autumn Festival, he prepared his family to prepare food for the Mid-Autumn Festival. In the eighth year of Qingli, Ouyang Xiu was an official in Yangzhou. Ouyang Xiu, a great writer of the Song Dynasty, also had the habit of inviting friends to get together during the Mid-Autumn Festival. The two families enjoyed drinking until dawn the next day. Wang Junyu wrote poems to help the fun, and called the women and children of the two families together. One Mid-Autumn Festival, because the sky was overcast and there was no moon to enjoy, Yan Shu was very disappointed. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, the two would enjoy the moon together. Yan Shu was a well-known writer in the Northern Song Dynasty. Take the scholar-official Yan Shu as an example. If there is no moon, at least one family Able to get together for a feast. For example, in extreme weather, if there is no moon to enjoy, wouldn't it be disappointing? So on this day, people began to invite friends to gather together. Not only Su Shi's 'Shui Tiao Song Tou', there are also folk customs such as Mid-Autumn Festival moon watching, frolicking, and torches.Īlthough watching the moon is good, it is not always possible to enjoy the moon every year. In the Song Dynasty, this tradition spread more widely.

#Earliest origin of midautumn festival full

With the foreshadowing of the Tang Dynasty, on the night of the full moon in the Mid-Autumn Festival, literati and scholar-officials began to admire the moon and chant poems on this day. If the moon is in love, the moon is long and round: the theme of 'Reunion' in the Mid-Autumn Festival of the Northern Song Dynasty Since then, the Mid-Autumn Festival has officially become a 'festival.' 2. In the Southern Song Dynasty, the imperial court officially issued a false peace order, and officials could take a day off on the Mid-Autumn Festival. In other words, by the Song Dynasty, admiring the moon on the Mid-Autumn Festival was no longer the patent of the scholar-official class, and folk customs gradually formed, and Festive themes such as 'Reunion' were injected on this day.

It was during the Song Dynasty that Mid-Autumn Festival was really designated as a holiday.ĭuring the Song Dynasty, the culture and commodity economy developed further, and the custom of admiring the moon incorporated more entertainment and market elements. However, the Mid-Autumn Festival in the Tang Dynasty was merely a season, not the concept of 'festival'. From the custom of 'appreciating the moon' in the Mid-Autumn Festival, it can be considered that the Mid-Autumn Festival originated in the Tang Dynasty. It is precisely because of this phrase that many people believe that Mid-Autumn Festival originated in the Tang Dynasty. The phrase 'August 15 Mid-Autumn Festival' is recorded in 'Book of Tang Emperor Taizong'. So that in the middle and late Tang Dynasty, watching the moon became a must-do for scholar-officials on August 15th.

Among them, Li Bai, Bai Juyi and others have frequently described the moon. Poems about the 'moon' are full of great enthusiasm. The Tang Dynasty is a paradise for poetry.

The most powerful evidence is the 'Playing the Moon' by Ouyang Zhan, a writer of the Tang Dynasty, which records: The 'Mid-Autumn' in the poem only refers to the middle stage of autumn. However, at that time, people worshiped the bright moon and expressed their feelings for the moon. Tao Yuanming once wrote: 'Morning is a horrible thing, bringing moon and lotuses back home.' Shen Xiuwen, a famous writer in the Southern Dynasty, once wrote a poem 'Ying Wang Zhongcheng Siyuan Yongyue', which is an earlier song of Yinyue. During the Western Han Dynasty Emperor Wen's period, Huainan King Liu An and his followers wrote a book of 'Huainanzi', which collected and processed a large number of moon-related myths, including 'Chang'e Flying to the Moon' and 'Wu Gang's Attack on Guangxi', which had a great influence on later generations.ĭuring the Wei, Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties, metaphysics prevailed, and literati gradually expressed more poems about the moon. In the Qin and Han dynasties, every autumn equinox, the emperor would send ministers to worship the moon. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, there was a record of 'sacrificing the sun on the altar and the moon on the ridge'. The 'Book of Rites' contains a lot of content about sacrifices. The initial embryonic form of the Mid-Autumn Festival can be traced back to the ancient people's worship of natural celestial phenomena, especially the moon. This month once looked at the ancients: the origin of the Mid-Autumn Festival