Part C : Winter Solstice Festival

As early as 2,500 years ago, about the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC), China had determined the point of Winter Solstice by looking at the movements of the sun with a sundial. It is the earliest of the 24 seasonal division points. The time will be each December 21 or 22, following the Gregorian calendar.

The Northern hemisphere on this day will experience the shortest daytime and longest nighttime. After the Winter Solstice, daytime will become longer and longer. As ancient Chinese thought, the yang, or muscular, positive things will become stronger and stronger after this day. Thus, it should be celebrated, as good things were getting greater and greater each day after this day.

The Winter Solstice became a festival during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) and thrived in the Tang and Song dynasties (618-1279). The Han people regarded Winter Solstice as a "Winter Festival", so that officials would organize celebrating activities. On this day, both officials and common people would have a rest. The army was guarding, frontier fortresses was closed and business and traveling stopped. Relatives and friends give to each other delicious food.

In the Tang and Song dynasties, the Winter Solstice was a day to offer scarifies to Heaven and ancestors. Emperors would depart for suburbs to worship the Heaven while common people offered sacrifices to their departed parents and relatives. The Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) even had the record that "Winter Solstice is as formal as the Spring Festival," showing the great magnitude attached to this day.

People consume dumpling soup on this day in some parts of Northern China while residents of some other places eat dumplings, which, they accept as truth, will keep them from frost in the approaching winter. But in parts of South China, the whole family will get together to have a meal made of red-bean and glutinous rice to drive away ghosts and other evil things. In other places, people also eat tang Yuan, a kind of stuffed small dumpling ball made of glutinous rice flour. The Winter Solstice rice dumplings could be used as sacrifices to ancestors, or gifts for friends and relatives. Taiwanese even keep the tradition of offering nine-layer cakes to their ancestors. They make cakes in the shape of chicken, duck, tortoise, pig, cow or sheep, which signify auspiciousness in Chinese tradition, with glutinous rice flour and steam them on different layers of a pot. People of the same family clan gather at their ancestral temples to worship their ancestors according to age. There is always a grand banquet after the sacrificial ceremony.

This festival is called Winter Solstice Festival (in Chinese is called ‘dong zi’) today.

( Edited from http://www.china.org.cn/ )