The Chinese Lantern Festival takes place at the culmination of the 15-day Chinese New Year celebration, on the night of the first full moon of the lunar new year. During Chinese New Year people start over with a clean slate and prepare for the year ahead. It is an opportunity for reconciliation, making peace and forgiving one another. Many families, friends and neighbors exchange gifts in this spirit of friendliness and goodwill. To symbolize this new beginning people clean their homes and businesses and wear new clothes on New Year's Day. Family unity being a fundamental part of Chinese New Year, it is also a time for honoring and paying one's respects to deceased relatives and ancestors.
The Lantern Festival has been celebrated for around 2,000 and many theories exist regarding its origins. Some believe it came about as a spiritual practice while others claim it arose due to certain historic events. There are different ways of celebrating the festival, but the central theme is always Chinese lanterns.
Chinese lanterns come in all shapes, sizes and colors. Many of them are symbolic, representing the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac, heroes or scenes from Chinese legends that embody traditional values. One popular lantern tradition is to attach riddles to them. The riddles usually refer to traditional Chinese poems, songs, stories or history and sometimes lantern riddle parties are held at temples on the night of the Lantern Festival. In this way, Chinese lanterns are not merely decorative but are an expression of Chinese culture.
The Lantern Festival is also known as Chinese Valentine's Day because it used to be the only day of the year when single women could leave their homes unchaperoned and meet eligible bachelors. Nowadays the festival is a time for single people to get together and play matchmaking games with the lanterns.
During the Lantern Festival people traditionally eat tang yuan, which are round balls of sticky rice flour filled with sesame paste, tangerine peel, walnuts, meat, fish or vegetables. They symbolize the full moon and are meant to represent the festival's key values of family togetherness and unity.
Author Resource:-
Rob Payne is the founder of Hanging Lanterns, suppliers of Chinese lanterns.
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