What do you usually put in Laba porridge? What's the point?

The most important festival in the twelfth lunar month is the eighth day of December, which was called "La Ri" in ancient times and commonly known as "Laba Festival". Since the pre-Qin period, Laba Festival has been used to worship ancestors and gods and pray for good harvest and good luck. According to legend, the prince of Kapylo Kingdom in northern India became a monk at the age of 29. He came to the Nilian River in the state of Mojietuo and fainted to the ground because of hunger and overwork. A shepherdess saw it, so she added some wild fruits to her grain and cooked porridge with spring water to feed him. After eating, the prince was refreshed. If he realized something, he sat quietly under the bodhi tree and became a Buddha in the early December of that year. He is Sakyamuni. Later, on the eighth day of December, Buddhists in China cooked porridge with rice and fruit to worship Buddha, which was called Laba porridge. Eating Laba porridge has gradually evolved into a folk custom in China. Laba porridge is also called "Qibao Wuwei porridge". China has been drinking Laba porridge for more than 1000 years. It first started in the Song Dynasty. On the day of Laba, whether it is the imperial court, the government, temples, or the people's homes, Laba porridge will be cooked. In the Qing Dynasty, the custom of drinking Laba porridge became more popular. At court, emperors, queens and princes give laba porridge to civil and military ministers and attendants, and distribute rice and fruit to monasteries for monks to eat. In the folk, every household should also make laba porridge to worship their ancestors; At the same time, family members get together for dinner and give gifts to relatives and friends.

After laba porridge is cooked, you should sacrifice to God and ancestors first. After that, give it to relatives and friends, and be sure to send it out before noon. Finally, the whole family eats together. It is a good sign that the leftover Laba porridge will be preserved after eating for a few days, indicating that there is more than one year. If you give porridge to the poor, it will be better for you.

Laba porridge also has the function of witchcraft in the folk. If there are flowers and fruit trees in the yard, put some Laba porridge on the branches. I believe it will bear more fruits next year.

Laba Festival is a traditional festival in China with a history of 1000 years. On the day of Laba, in addition to offering sacrifices to ancestors and worshipping God, there are people who mourn the national subjugation and place their grief. With the reform and opening-up, foreign new things and new ideas keep pouring into China, and many western festivals such as Christmas, April Fool's Day and Valentine's Day are gradually accepted by us. Many young people also celebrate these festivals as important activities. However, while accepting new things, we should not forget many traditions left by our ancestors. Today, when it comes to Laba Festival, young people may know little or nothing about it except the elderly.

In fact, we should re-attach importance to these old traditions with China characteristics, and we can't completely westernize ourselves, and we can't find any shadow of China people in ourselves. After Laba, relatives who are usually busy and rarely get together can have one more reunion festival to worship their ancestors together; Children who are used to eating greasy KFC and McDonald's can try authentic Laba porridge and listen to the allusions of Laba. Maybe they will be novel. Laba in old China was superstitious, so we can completely abandon some old ideas, improve them with new ones and carry them forward.

You can also publicize Laba Festival, make use of traditional festivals to prosper the tourism market, and let more international friends know about China and feel the charm of China traditional culture through Laba Festival. Laba porridge in particular can be used as Chinese food.

There are many kinds of Laba porridge in China. Among them, Beiping is the most exquisite, and there are many items mixed in white rice, such as red dates, lotus seeds, walnuts, chestnuts, almonds, pine nuts, longan, hazelnuts, grapes, ginkgo, water chestnut, moss, roses, red beans and peanuts. , a total of not less than twenty kinds. On the night of the seventh day of the twelfth lunar month, people began to get busy, washing rice, soaking fruits, peeling, removing stones and picking carefully, then cooking in the middle of the night and stewing with low fire until Laba porridge was cooked the next morning.

More sophisticated people should first carve fruits into human shapes, animals and patterns, and then cook them in a pot. More distinctive is to put "fruit lion" in Laba porridge. Fruit lion is a lion made of several kinds of fruits, with peeled and dried crisp dates as the lion's body, half walnut kernel as the lion's head, peach kernel as the lion's foot and sweet almond as the lion's tail. Then stick them together with sugar and put them in a porridge bowl, just like a little lion. If the bowl is bigger, you can put two lions or four little lions on it. More exquisite, it is made of jujube paste, red bean paste, yam, hawthorn cake and other foods in various colors, and kneaded into statues of the Eight Immortals, the birthday girl, Luohan and so on. This decorative Laba porridge can only be seen on the altar of a big temple in the past.