Why do pedestrians on the road break their souls during the Qingming Festival?

Because the thought of deceased relatives is full of sadness and melancholy. Since the Tang and Song Dynasties, Tomb-Sweeping Day has been a big festival integrating Cold Food Festival and Shangsi Festival, and its rich customs and activities are enough to compete with the Spring Festival in traditional festivals in China. Here we divide its traditional customs into three parts: sacrifice, spring outing and diet.

(A), Tomb-Sweeping Day's sacrificial activities

Tomb-Sweeping Day is one of the three major Halloween festivals in China (the other two Halloween festivals are July 15 and 10/0/day). "Ghost Festival" is a festival to mourn the dead, as opposed to a festival to worship gods and land gods.

The participants in Tomb-Sweeping Day are all the people, from princes and ministers to ordinary people, to pay homage to the dead souls of their ancestors on this festival. Since the Tang Dynasty, the imperial court has given officials a holiday and asked them to go to their hometown to visit their graves. According to "Dream of Liang Lu" in the Song Dynasty, every time you go to Tomb-Sweeping Day, "officials go out to the tombs of the suburbs to show their respect for their thoughts." The number of grave sweepers is not limited to men and women, and they often go out with their families. In this way, grave-sweeping activities around Tomb-Sweeping Day often become the personal participation of the whole society. Within a few days, the country people came and went, and the scale was extremely prosperous.

The object of sacrifice. As a Ghost Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day mainly worships ancestors and deceased relatives, expressing the worshippers' filial piety and feelings of missing the deceased. Tomb-Sweeping Day belongs to Ghost Festival, but it is usually not named Ghost Festival, because it mainly worships good ghosts, family ghosts, or the dead souls of loved ones, and focuses on expressing filial piety and affection. In the other two Halloween festivals, even evil spirits and wild ghosts sacrifice together, and the key point is to appease ghosts and prevent them from doing anything. But we can't generalize. Some places also have the custom of Tomb-Sweeping Day offering sacrifices to other ghosts and gods. According to the old custom in Shanghai, there is a ritual of offering sacrifices to ghosts in Tomb-Sweeping Day to prevent them from becoming evil spirits. This kind of altar is called sacrificial altar. In old Shanghai and Tomb-Sweeping Day, the day before yesterday, the city god was ushered in. On this day in Tomb-Sweeping Day, the God of the Town God cruised to worship the platform in a big sedan chair to get rid of ghosts and ghosts. The scene was very grand and lively.

At the time of sacrifice. There are differences around Tomb-Sweeping Day. In the past, Beijingers paid homage to sweep graves not in Tomb-Sweeping Day, but on Singles Day near Tomb-Sweeping Day. Only monks offer sacrifices to sweep graves in Tomb-Sweeping Day. In Lishui, Zhejiang, grave-sweeping takes place in the first three days and the last four days in Tomb-Sweeping Day, which is called "the first three days and the last four days". In Shandong, in the old days, most areas visited graves in Tomb-Sweeping Day, a few areas such as Zhucheng visited graves during the Cold Food Festival, and some places visited graves in the first four days of Tomb-Sweeping Day. Nowadays, people usually visit graves in Tomb-Sweeping Day. People in southern Shanxi divide the time for sweeping graves into two times. On one occasion, a few days ago in Tomb-Sweeping Day, my family went to visit the grave separately. The second time was in Tomb-Sweeping Day, where representatives of families with the same surname in a village went to the cemetery to worship their ancestors. Shanghai people sweep graves, and the new graves are different from the old ones. People who have recently passed away, who haven't done the ceremony of turning over after 7749 days, should ask monks and nuns to chant Buddhist scriptures or do Dojo in Tomb-Sweeping Day on this day. If it's an old grave, it's unnecessary for Tomb-Sweeping Day to sweep the grave, but it can be relaxed before and after, but it can't go beyond the first seven days and the last eight days. As the saying goes, "the first seven days, the last eight days, the ghost holiday." This means that it will fail too early or too late.