Mid-Autumn Festival

This past September 13th was the Mid-Autumn Festival, a harvest festival celebrated all over Asia under a myriad of names. The festival is held every year on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar, which would correspond to mid-September to early October of the Gregorian calendar. This harvest festival is celebrated for three main reasons, gathering of family and friends, giving thanks for a bountiful harvest or harmonious reunions, and praying for good fortune and prosperity. The moon itself is a symbol of family reunion, so the festival is also known as the Festival of Reunion. My family celebrates by sharing mooncakes, a traditional snack made of lotus seed paste, sweet bean or red bean paste, jujube (date) paste, among many other possible renditions. Within traditional mooncakes, there is one to two egg yolks to symbolize the moon, and on top of mooncakes are different characters that translate to ideas such as longevity, harmony, or prosperity. My immediate family celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival with our whole neighborhood as well as with our own family. We put together a large neighborhood potluck to catch up with each other and connect with the people who have moved in recently. For my family, my grandmother cooks an elaborate dinner using whole ingredients to represent the full moon, for example, my grandmother will cook a whole chicken and fish, serving it with its head and feet/tail. The tradition of celebrating and worshipping the moon gained popularity in the Tang Dynasty, but rituals in honor of the moon date thousands of years prior than the Tang Dynasty in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. The citizens celebrated the festival by lighting lanterns, admiring the moon, and eating as a family, but they also offered sacrifices to the moon goddess to increase their harvests and keep them bountiful.