The tradition of celebrating the first month of a baby's life is still practiced in many places to symbolize the infant's birth. However, this celebration is but one of the climaxes in the wealth of traditional Chinese birth rites.

  The beginning of life rites

Most of the nations in the world have various life rites, which encompass a person's entire life. It all begins from one's birth to his or her death, separated by a series of important occasions like growing up, adulthood, and marriage. Among all of them the birth rite is the first major event and carries people's love and blessing for the newborn.

The traditional birth rites of the Han people usually consisted of several parts, including the birth rite, the three-day rite, the one-month rite, the hundred-day rite, and the one-year-old rite. The culmination of these celebrations signaled the end of the birth rites.

  The main customs of traditional birth rites

Traditional Chinese birth rites varied in form and expression based on terrain differences. Nevertheless, most of the them included five major rites for the celebrations of a child: at birth, and when he or she was three days old, a month old, a hundred days old, and a year old; The details were largely identical except for a few minor differences.

Birth Rite

According to the Classic of Poetry, if a boy is born, he should be dressed in fancy clothing and put on a bed, with a jade ware given to him as a toy. If a girl is born, she should sleep on the floor in swaddling clothes, and be given a pottery spindle to play with. The notion of valuing men and belittling women as well as the concept that men are superior to women are very obvious in this tradition.

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