When is Laba?

Laba Festival is the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month every year.

“Children, don’t be greedy, it’s the New Year after Laba Festival”, Laba Festival, commonly known as “Laba Festival”. From this day on, people begin to buy new year goods to welcome the upcoming Spring Festival.

The predecessor of the Laba Festival is the ancient Laba Day, which was an important year-end sacrificial day in ancient times. There was no fixed period for the twelfth lunar month at first. It was not until the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties that it was fixed on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month.

Eating Laba porridge is an important custom of the Laba Festival. Among the people, there are many legends about Laba porridge, among which the most widely circulated is the story of "the shepherd girl offering chyle" in Buddhism. Legend has it that Sakyamuni ate porridge cooked by a shepherd girl on the Laba Festival and became a Buddha under the bodhi tree. People who believe in Buddhism in later generations will hold sutra chanting activities, cook porridge for Buddha, and give porridge to benefit everyone on Laba Festival. Therefore, "Laba porridge" is also called "Buddha porridge".