Why do Tomb-Sweeping Day plant trees and eat jujube eggs 202 1?
Why did Tomb-Sweeping Day plant trees at 202 1?
China has the habit of planting trees in Qingming since ancient times. Some people even call Tomb-Sweeping Day Arbor Day. The custom of planting trees has been passed down to this day. This is because before and after Tomb-Sweeping Day, the spring is bright, the spring rain is falling, and the plants planted have high survival rate and fast growth, so there is a saying that "melons and beans are planted before and after Qingming Festival". The folk custom of planting trees originated from the funeral custom. As early as the Western Zhou Dynasty, feudal rulers began to plant trees in graves, but planting trees at that time was only a sign of the ruler's identity. And ordinary people are not allowed to set up graves to plant trees. Therefore, planting trees in graves is still not popular. It was not until the Spring and Autumn Period that people began to plant trees on graves in imitation of the rulers' behavior. At this time, tree planting only existed as a symbol of ancestral graves. According to the Book of Rites, Confucius planted pines and cypresses in front of his parents' graves in order to accurately identify his ancestral graves in the future. But at this time, planting trees has nothing to do with Tomb-Sweeping Day. The combination of Qingming and planting trees is really because of Emperor Gaozu Liu Bang. According to legend, in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, Liu Bang, the Emperor Gaozu, was too busy to go back to his hometown because he had been fighting abroad for many years. He didn't go back to his hometown to worship his ancestors until he became emperor, but he couldn't find his parents' graves for a while. Later, with the help of everyone, a dilapidated tombstone was found in the chaotic grass, so people were ordered to build a grave and erect a monument, and pine and cypress were planted as a sign. It happened that this day was Tomb-Sweeping Day in the twenty-four solar terms of the lunar calendar, and Liu Bang, on the advice of Confucian scholars, decided that Tomb-Sweeping Day was the ancestor worship festival. After that, every time he went to Tomb-Sweeping Day, he would return to his hometown and hold a grand ancestor worship and tree planting activity. Later, this custom spread among the people, and people combined Qingming ancestor worship with tree planting, and gradually formed a fixed folk custom. In the Tang Dynasty, the folk custom of walking in the Qingming Festival and inserting willows in the Qingming Festival was very popular. The so-called willow insertion originally refers to an act of inserting willow branches into people. However, in the process of walking in the fields and worshipping ancestors in graves, people often insert willow branches into graves or the ground, so that willows will survive and inadvertently play a role in planting trees.