The Mid-Autumn Festival is a harvest festival celebrated in Chinese culture; along with the Chinese New Year, it is one of the most important celebrations in Chinese culture. Some call it the Moon Festival or Mooncake Festival. This year, the Mid-Autumn Festival is on September 17, 2024.
The history of the Mid-Autumn Festival dates back over 3,000 years. As a harvest festival, it was a time to enjoy the successful reaping of rice and wheat with food offerings made in honor of the moon. In ancient China, the people celebrated the autumn harvest and made food offerings to the moon goddess Chang’e. Today, it has become a special occasion for friends and relatives to gather for a lavish meal, to spend time together and to eat mooncakes – a rich pastry typically filled with sweet-bean, lotus-seed paste and cooked egg yolk. The making and sharing of mooncakes is one of the main traditions of the Mid-Autumn Festival. In traditional Chinese culture, the circle symbolizes unity, wholeness, harmony and perfect balance. Therefore, the sharing and eating of mooncakes among family and community members during the week of the Mid-Autumn Festival signifies the pursuit of these qualities in their families and communities.
In some places, people celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with decorated and brightly lit lanterns. It is not exactly known how lanterns were introduced into the Mid-Autumn festival because there is another Chinese festival called the Lantern Festival, which marks the final day of the traditional Chinese New Year celebration. Historians have ascertained that lanterns were not used in the Mid-Autumn Festival prior to the Tang dynasty. Another tradition that evolved in the Mid-Autumn Festival is for people to write riddles and have other people try to guess the answers.