What are the customs of the Cold Food Festival?

The customs of the Cold Food Festival include: forbidding fire, offering sacrifices to ancestors, eating, inserting willows, climbing mountains, swinging, cuju, reciting poems and clearing the intestines.

1, no fire

The Cold Food Festival was also called "No Smoking Festival" in ancient times. Everyone is forbidden to make a fire and eat cold food. However, due to the persistent pursuit of sages by Chinese people, it was repeatedly banned from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and it was not until the Tang Dynasty that it was recognized and participated by the royal family.

"Try new fire and new tea" in Su Shi's Looking at the South of the Yangtze River is about brew tea's behavior after the poet's cold food. The folk custom of forbidding fire and cold food in Shanxi is mostly one day, and only a few places are used to forbidding fire for three days. ?

Step 2 worship ancestors

The Cold Food Festival was regarded as a "wild sacrifice" from the Southern and Northern Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, it was included in Volume 87 of "Opening Ethan", which was worshipped by princes (cold food worship) and became one of the auspicious gifts officially recognized and advocated.

Later, it evolved into a royal mausoleum; Official sacrifices to Confucius Temple and sages; People go to sweep graves and so on. At that time, a family or a clan went to the ancestral grave to offer sacrifices, add soil and hang paper money, then sprinkled swallows and snakes and rabbits on the top of the grave, rolled them down, put them on with willow branches or needles, and put them high in the room to show their ancestors' virtue.

Step 3 prescribe diet

Cold food includes cold porridge, cold noodles, cold paste, green rice and porridge. Cold food offerings include noodles, snakes and rabbits, jujube cakes, refined rye, immortals, etc. There are dozens of drinks, such as spring wine, fresh tea, clear spring and sweet water.

Most of them have profound implications, such as offering sacrifices to snakes and rabbits, which means that "snakes and rabbits will be rich", meaning that people are expected to be rich and the country is strong; Zituiyan, take the word "nian" in Jiexiu dialect, and don't forget to introduce and promote honesty. ?

People in southern Shanxi are used to eating bean jelly, cold noodles and cold cakes. In northern Shanxi, people are used to cooking (that is, steamed cake noodles or white noodles are cut into dice-sized squares, then dried and fried with earth) as food for the Cold Food Festival. In some mountainous areas, the whole family eats fried noodles on this day (that is, stir-fry whole grains, mix various dried fruits and grind them into noodles).

Step 4 insert willow

The symbol of the Vitamin Cold Food Festival was originally intended to remember meson's pursuit of political clarity. As early as the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there was a record in the Chronicle of Jingchu that "every family broke willow during the cold food between Jianghuai and Suzhou", and it is still popular to wear mustard flowers and wheat leaves instead of willow branches in Anhui, Suzhou and other places.

According to historical records in various places, there are some sayings, such as "willow branches are inserted into graves", "willow branches are folded into households", "willow branches are inserted into the eaves of sleeping stoves", "wearing a head or a tie", "offering Buddha gods in bottles" and "willow branches are inserted into doors", so there is a saying among the people that "Qingming (cold food) does not wear willow, and the beauty becomes bald".

Step 5 go for an outing

Also known as spring outing, Sheng Xing was born in Tang and Song Dynasties. Song Lizhi's words "What I saw in the East Valley" say: "I swept things, and then I went home happily with my brother, wife, relatives and deeds." In the Ming Dynasty, a brief introduction to the scenery of emperors recorded the scene of walking in Beijing: "During the Qingming Festival, people were walking, and there were thousands of tourists, passengers and pedestrians." Can be said to be extremely prosperous.

Step 6 swing

Swing was originally a female amusement in the ancient cold food festival. Wang Renyu's "Kaiyuan Tianbao Legacy" in the Five Dynasties recorded that "the Tianbao Palace Mid-solstice Cold Food Festival actually erected a swing, which made the wives and concubines in the palace laugh and thought it was a feast. The emperor called it a semi-fairy play, so the scholars in the capital called it. " Wen Yanbo, the prime minister of the Song Dynasty, wrote the poem "Cold Food Day Crossing the Dragon Gate", which is described as "the willow on the bridge hangs on a line and hangs more colorful ropes."

7. Rough ball

Popular in the Tang Dynasty, the Song Dynasty's "Literature General Examination" contained: "Cuju, Gai began in the Tang Dynasty. Plant two bamboos, several feet high, and wrap the net on the net to measure the ball for the door. The ball is divided into friends and friends, and the game is divided into corners. "

Historical records: Tang Dezong, Xianzong, Mu Zong and Jing Zong all like to play cuju. Yuan Guizai, the state capital, said: "In February of the twelfth year of Zhenyuan in Tang Dezong, the Imperial Palace East Pavilion, the great ministers and the sons and daughters of Xunqi met the ball and held a banquet for the ministers to be slaughtered." In the Song Dynasty, there was "Taizu Cuju Map".

8. Poetry

During the Cold Food Festival, literati or homesick relatives, or borrowing scenery, have feelings, feelings, inspirations, poems and chanters. According to the survey, The Complete Poems of Tang Dynasty alone contains more than 300 poems by famous people such as Tang Xuanzong, Zhang Shuo, Du Fu, Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan, and more than 100 poems in the Song, Jin and Yuan Dynasties, making it a wonderful work in Chinese poetry art?

9. Clean the intestines

Picking wild vegetables during the cold food festival not only exercises the body, but also meets the needs of the human body, killing two birds with one stone. Finally, I want to talk about psychological adjustment in spring health preservation.

Women are injured in spring, and it can prevent mental illness to come out for fun and enjoy a spring outing at the Cold Food Festival. Although men don't hurt spring, when the liver-qi is too strong and they are prone to mental disorders in spring, they cherish the memory of their ancestors and place their grief on them, which has played a role in restraining anger.

Conditioning the liver is quite beneficial. After 5,000 years of cultural nourishment, cold food and Qingming are integrated into one, becoming a festival to remember old friends and inspire strangers.