Lantern Festival

The Lantern Festival is a Chinese festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunisolar year in the lunar calendar marking the last day of the lunar New Year celebration. It is usually in February or March in the Gregorian calendar. As early as the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 25), it had become a festival with great significance. During the Lantern Festival, children go out at night to temples carrying paper lanterns and solve riddles on the lanterns (simplified Chinese: 猜灯谜; traditional Chinese: 猜燈謎; pinyin: cāidēngmí; Jyutping: caai1dang1mai4).

In ancient times, the lanterns were fairly simple, and only the emperor and noblemen had large ornate ones . In modern times, lanterns have been embellished with many complex designs. For example, lanterns are now often made in the shape of animals. The lanterns can symbolize the people letting go of their past selves and getting new ones, which they will let go of the next year. The lanterns are almost always red to symbolize good fortune

Lantern

A lantern is a portable lighting device or mounted fixture used to illuminate areas. Lanterns may also be used for signaling, as torches, or as general light sources outdoors. Low light level varieties are used for decoration. The term "lantern" is also used more generically to mean a light source, or the enclosure for a light source. Examples are glass pane enclosed street lights, or the housing for the top lamp and lens section of a lighthouse. The term is commonly associated with Chinese paper lanterns.

History

Lanterns are first spoken of by Theopompus, a Greek poet, and Empedocles of Agrigentum. Lanterns were used by the ancients in augury. The only known representation of an ancient Egyptian lantern probably is not much different from those spoken of by John the Evangelist in John 18:3 from the New Testament, where the party of men who went out of Jerusalem to apprehend Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane is described as being provided “with lanterns and torches.” Lanterns in ancient China were made of silk, paper, or animal skin with frames made of bamboo or wood. One of the earliest descriptions of paper lanterns is found in records from Khotan, which describe a "mounting lantern" made of white paper.

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A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect of that community and its religion or traditions, often marked as a local or national holiday, mela or eid. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern.

Festivals often serve to fulfill specific communal purposes, especially in regard to commemoration or thanksgiving. The celebrations offer a sense of belonging for religious, social, or geographical groups, contributing to group cohesiveness. They may also provide entertainment, which was particularly important to local communities before the advent of mass-produced entertainment. Festivals that focus on cultural or ethnic topics also seek to inform community members of their traditions; the involvement of elders sharing stories and experience provides a means for unity among families.

Unknown

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