As an important festival in Tomb-Sweeping Day, the customs such as offering sacrifices and hiking mainly come from the Cold Food Festival and Shangsi Festival. The Cold Food Festival is related to the ancient people's understanding of nature. In China, the rebirth of a new fire after a cold meal is a transitional ceremony to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new. It reveals the information of seasonal alternation and symbolizes the beginning of a new season, a new hope, a new life and a new cycle. Later, there was a sense of gratitude, and more emphasis was placed on nostalgia and gratitude for the past.
Cold food is forbidden to eat cold food tombs, and Qingming takes a new fire to travel. Before the Tang Dynasty, Cold Food Festival and Tomb-Sweeping Day were two consecutive festivals with different themes. The former mourns the past and the latter seeks new life. One yin and one yang, one breath for life, are closely related. Fire is forbidden to make a fire, and sacrifice to the dead is to save lives. This is the internal cultural connection between cold food and Qingming. During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, the imperial court fixed the custom of sweeping graves at the Cold Food Festival in front of Tomb-Sweeping Day by decree. Because cold food and Qingming are closely related in time, the custom of cold food festival has long been associated with Qingming, and grave sweeping has been postponed from cold food to Qingming.
After entering the Song Dynasty, Qingming and cold food gradually merged into one, and Qingming put the sacrificial customs in the cold food festival under its name. At the same time, Tomb-Sweeping Day has also integrated into the festival custom of "Spring outing on Shangsi Festival". After the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Shangsi Festival withdrew from the festival system, and the Cold Food Festival basically disappeared. There is only one Tomb-Sweeping Day left in spring.
"Tomb-Sweeping Day is the synthesis and sublimation of almost all Spring Festival, and Tomb-Sweeping Day customs have richer cultural connotations." Shi Aidong said. Different from other traditional festivals, Tomb-Sweeping Day is a comprehensive festival that combines "solar terms" and "festival customs". In terms of solar terms, Tomb-Sweeping Day has just passed the vernal equinox. At this time, the weather is warmer and everywhere is full of vitality. People go hiking and get close to nature, which can be said to conform to the weather, help to absorb the pure sun of nature, dispel depressed emotions and be beneficial to physical and mental health.
Since the Tang dynasty, cold food and Qingming have been on holiday side by side, with four to seven days' holiday in different years. Song Dynasty is an era of increasingly urbanized life and the development of folk customs in the direction of entertainment. In order to allow people to sweep graves and go hiking in Tomb-Sweeping Day, it is specially stipulated that imperial academy will have a three-day holiday and the martial arts school will have a day off. The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival depicts Tomb-Sweeping Day at that time.
Tomb-Sweeping Day's grave-sweeping and outing were originally two different cultural themes, which gradually merged into one after the Song Dynasty and were constantly endowed with positive cultural significance. People directly associate ancestor worship with the Chinese national character of attaching importance to filial piety and cautiously pursuing the future, and think that Tomb-Sweeping Day custom embodies the moral consciousness of China people who are grateful and never forget their roots. Its cultural significance is similar to Thanksgiving in the West. Tomb-Sweeping Day's activities of worshipping ancestors and sweeping graves and remembering ancestors' merits are deeply related to the profound ancestor worship and filial piety culture in China culture, which is the pillar of the harmonious and stable development of China society for thousands of years, and helps to establish a harmonious intergenerational relationship between the ancients and the modern, predecessors and descendants, thus promoting the harmonious relationship between man and nature, which is also the folk foundation with strong vitality in Tomb-Sweeping Day.
Shi Aidong introduced that with the development of productive forces and the evolution of social life, there was a trend of changing from sacrifice to secular entertainment in Tomb-Sweeping Day earlier, and the Qingming Festival to pay homage to the grave became a holiday time for a spring outing. Because willow is a good tree in spring, it is also a unique fashion in Qingming. During the Republic of China, Willow Arbor Day was once called "Arbor Day". However, in any case, memorial service and sacrifice are the most important contents of China Tomb-Sweeping Day.
"No matter from its origin or its evolution, we can sum up two symbolic meanings of Tomb-Sweeping Day, one is' gratitude commemoration' and the other is' urging new life'."