Lantern Festival

The Lantern Festival, the Little First Month, the New Year’s Eve or the Lantern Festival, is on the fifteenth day of the first month of the lunar calendar.
The first month is the first month of the lunar calendar. The ancients called “night” as “night”. The fifteenth day of the first month is the first full moon night of the year, so the fifteenth day of the first month is called “Lantern Festival”. According to the Taoist saying of “three yuan”, the fifteenth day of the first month is also called “Shangyuan Festival”. The Lantern Festival custom has been based on the warm and festive lantern watching custom since ancient times.
The formation of the Lantern Festival has a long process, which is rooted in the ancient folk custom of turning on lights to pray for blessings. According to the general data and folk legends, the 15th day of the first month has been paid attention to in the Western Han Dynasty, but the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month really became a national folk festival after the Han and Wei Dynasties. The rise of the custom of lighting lanterns on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month is also related to the spread of Buddhism to the east. In the Tang Dynasty, Buddhism flourished, and officials and people generally “lit lanterns for Buddha” on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. Buddhist lanterns were then spread throughout the people. Since the Tang Dynasty, the Lantern Festival has become a legal matter.
Lantern Festival is one of the traditional festivals in China. The Lantern Festival mainly includes a series of traditional folk activities such as watching lanterns, eating glutinous rice balls, guessing lantern riddles, and setting off fireworks. In addition, many local Lantern Festival also added traditional folk performances such as dragon lantern, lion dance, stilt walking, roller boating, Yangko dancing, and Taiping drum playing. In June 2008, the Lantern Festival was selected as the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage.