What do you do on Tanabata? What is the Qixi Festival?

1. During the Qixi Festival, people will wear needles and beg for skill, like spiders, cast needles to test skills, plant and ask for children, worship "grinding and drinking", worship Weaver Girl, worship Kui Xing, dry books, dry clothes, congratulate the birthday of the cow, eat Qiaoguo and so on.

2. On the day of the Qixi Festival, girls and women made an appointment to hold a ceremony together, set up melon and fruit offerings, bathe and fast, and burn incense to worship. Then everyone sat around the table together, eating melons and fruits and snacks, and silently making a wish to the Weaver Girl, such as marrying a wishful husband and giving birth to a noble son early.

3. During the Chinese Valentine's Day, people will also make some small dolls with different images to put at home. At first, the dolls were made of clay, making some dolls of cowherds and weaver girls and children, or small animals such as cows and sheep. Later, it became more and more exquisite, not only using gold and silver, but also making strange dolls as tall as real people.

4. Among the various competitions of the Qixi Festival, the needle threading competition was the first to become popular, about the beginning of the Han Dynasty. On the day of the Qixi Festival, women and girls from all families will leave the house, and everyone gathers under the grape trellis, guessing what the girl and weaver girl will say when they meet, and at the same time taking out their own needlework and thread. By threading the needle, the one who wears it the fastest is the one who has the most skillful hands.

The Qixi Festival can be a begging activity.

The begging activity is the most traditional folk activity of the Qixi Festival. Begging is to beg for wisdom, begging for the Weaver Girl to give her skills and make herself smart. In the area of Jinan, Shandong, people display melons and fruits, if there are spiders on the melons and fruits to build webs, it means that the birds have succeeded.

Or catch a spider, put it in a box, and open the box the next day if the spider has formed a web.

Cao County, Plains and other areas have the custom of eating begging for food, and it is also very interesting: seven good girls gather grain and vegetables to make dumplings, wrap a copper coin, a needle and a red date into three dumplings respectively, and then everyone gets together to eat dumplings, the legend is blessed to eat copper coins, and the ingenuity of eating needles, and those who eat red dates can find Ruyi Langjun very early.

Tanabata tradition:

The Qixi Festival is not only a festival to worship the Seven Sisters, but also a festival of love, which is a comprehensive festival with the folklore of "Cowherd and Weaver Girl" as the carrier, with the theme of praying, begging and love, and with women as the main body.

The "Cowherd and Weaver Girl" of Qixi Festival ** in people's worship of natural celestial phenomena, in ancient times, people corresponded to each other in astronomical star regions and geographical regions, and this correspondence is called "dividing stars" in terms of astronomy, and in terms of geography, it is called "dividing fields". Legend has it that every year on the seventh day of the seventh month of July, the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl will meet at the Magpie Bridge in the sky.