One of the traditional 24 solar terms: Is the long summer a holiday?
Question: Is the long summer a holiday?
A: Long summer is a festival. Summer is a traditional folk festival of Han nationality, which is called "Long Summer Festival" and is popular all over the country.
Festival introduction
The word "summer" in "long summer" means "big", which means that the plants sown in spring have grown upright. In ancient times, people attached great importance to the customs and habits of long summer. On the long summer day, the ancient emperor would lead officials to the southern suburbs of Beijing to welcome the summer and hold a ceremony to welcome the summer. The monarch and his subjects all wear red ceremonial costumes and red jade ornaments, and even horses and car flags should be red to express their desire and good wishes for a bumper harvest. In the imperial court, "open the ice in summer and give it to the civil and military ministers." Ice was stored last winter and given to officials by the emperor. In the folk, people drink cold drinks to cool off in summer. In summer, there is a custom of boiling tender broad beans in Jiangnan water town. In some places, there is also the custom of calling people in summer.
The Long Summer Festival is in summer. In ancient times, there was a ceremony of "long summer, welcoming summer in the southern suburbs, and offering sacrifices to Zhu Rong and Chi Di". There is a habit in modern times, which is to taste new things and call people. On this day, people cook cooked wheat and barley ears on the fire to enjoy the freshness of new wheat. Or weigh people with scales to pray. During the long summer festival, people are forbidden to sit on the threshold. Many people are also used to measuring a year's harvest with cloudy eyes in summer, and think that it is best to rain when it rains in long summer, otherwise it means "it doesn't rain in long summer, and wheat comes in drought" and "it doesn't rain in long summer, and the plowshares hang high".
Festival custom
Long summer celebrates summer. For modern people, the long summer is just a solar term, which means that spring goes and summer comes. However, our ancestors thought that long summer was an important day. This is because the original meaning of "long summer" means that the plants sown in spring have grown up. In ancient times, agriculture was the most important, and Changchun and Tian He were established. Of course, the ancients should have some related customs.
What is the custom of long summer in ancient times? According to the book "Festival Music", emperors in the pre-Qin period personally led officials from civil and military departments to the suburbs to hold a ceremony to welcome the summer on this long summer day. At that time, monarchs and subjects all wore scarlet robes and jade ornaments, rode red horses and scarlet cars, and even the flags of the cars were scarlet. This red ceremony to welcome summer strongly expressed the good wishes of the ancient people for a bumper harvest.
Later, with the evolution of the age, the custom of long summer in ancient times changed. Dong Liu, an Amin, recorded in "A Brief View of the Imperial Capital" that "ice is opened in summer and given to civil and military ministers." It can be seen that on the long summer day in the Ming Dynasty, the official in charge of ice administration in the imperial court would dig up the ice stored in the winter cellar, chop it up and hand it over to the officials by the emperor. In fact, it was not in the Ming Dynasty that Emperor Chang Xia gave ice. According to textual research, it has become a routine and custom for Emperor Chang Xia to send ice to ministers in the Song Dynasty.
The above conclusion is what I bring to you about the Long Summer Festival. I wonder if it will help everyone?