Why is Tomb-Sweeping Day always around April 5th?
2. There are 24 solar terms in China lunar calendar, and every time the sun moves 15 degrees on the ecliptic, it is defined as a solar term or medium performance. Every solar term has a specific time, but in the Gregorian calendar, it is not fixed on a certain day.
3. The time for the earth to go around the sun is called tropic year or solar year, and the running route of the sun under the starry background is called ecliptic. The actual length of a tropical year is 365.2422 days, and the Gregorian calendar year is 365 days, so there will be 0.2422 days (about 5.8 hours) more each year, and the specific time of solar terms will be delayed by 0.2422 days each year; This four-year accumulation is 0.9688 days, which is close to one day. In order to correct it, the Gregorian calendar has a leap year system, and every four years, there will be one more day on February 29. The extension of the solar term sometimes makes the time of a solar term pass midnight to the next day, or because of the leap year, the solar term is advanced by one day, which leads to the change of the solar term time. Of course, no matter how it changes, the date difference of solar terms will only be within 3 days. The date in Tomb-Sweeping Day will only change on April 4th, 5th and 6th.
Qingming is both a festival and a solar term. In ancient times, there were Cold Food Festival and Shangsi Festival, which were close to Tomb-Sweeping Day. Both festivals are in the early March of the lunar calendar. Later, people merged these two festivals, so there was Tomb-Sweeping Day.
Tomb-Sweeping Day has a series of customs, such as sweeping sacrifices, hiking, swinging and cuju. In addition, there are some interesting eating customs. For example, in some places, eating eggs in Tomb-Sweeping Day means being healthy all year round; In Jiangnan, there is a custom of having a reunion dinner. In all parts of China, a kind of crispy fried food called prickly heat is deeply loved by people. At the same time, Tomb-Sweeping Day is the best season to eat snails, because the snails at this time have not yet propagated and are the most plump and plump, so there is a saying that Qingming snails are worth a goose; In addition, there are some customs in different regions, such as moistening cakes and vegetables, black rice, pushing steamed bread and steaming noodles. In some areas, Tomb-Sweeping Day has the custom of eating cakes, clearing fruit, sandwich cakes, clear glutinous rice balls, steamed cakes, clear cakes and dried porridge.