The Chinese Lantern Festival (Shang Yuan) marks the end of the Chinese New Year’s celebration. It is generally believed that this festival originated more than 2000 years ago during the rule of the Western Han dynasty. Emperor Wu started the worship rituals and Emperor Ming, a devout Buddhist made it a custom to light candles in the palaces, temples and homes. He also started the custom of adorning houses with lanterns made of coloured paper that had candles lit in them. These lanterns are what we today know as Chinese Lanterns.
The speciality of this festival is gazing at the moon, lighting lanterns, writing and solving riddles, dancing the lion dance, and most importantly, ending the day by eating the special rice-balls that have been made for the occasion.
The Lantern festival is a time for a family get-together as relatives and friends would meet at the ancestral homes as one family. This is a time when the elders light lanterns, the children laugh and dance to music and the teenagers spend time with their close friends. This spirit of gathering together and family interaction made it one of the most important social events of the year.
The ancient people in China were very orthodox and did not generally permit the young people in their family to go out or talk to others but during this festival all such restrictions were forgotten. The young and old went out into the towns and villages and sang and danced with all gaiety earning the festival the name ‘Chinese Valentine’s Day. The festival also included worship to the Gods of Nature, breaking all caste and creed barriers.
It was common during the festival to see stage shows performed at every neighbourhood while pretty girls and handsome men would dress up in all finery and dance to the drumbeats of musicians, The popular Chinese saying was –‘If you swing and sway on the Lantern Festival – you will have no aches and pains for the rest of the year’.
The adults would see to it that their children were kept busy by having riddles to solve, as the adults enjoy drinking Chinese Wine.The teenagers would make lanterns in all colours and write popular riddles on them and light it up in a competitive manner which would be inspected by the elders in the family to judge the best lantern.
This spirit of family and friends coming together for this festival continues amongst the Chinese for more than 2000 years, and is likely to remain so for the next 2000 years.
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