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Celebrating Laba Festival: Holiday Spirit Fills the Land
China possesses many traditional holidays, of which Spring
Festival is the most important and the most festive. An extended celebration
of the Lunar New Year that lasts for several weeks, Spring Festival encompasses
Laba
Festival, Little New Year, Lunar New Year's Eve, Lunar New Year's Day, and
Lantern
Festival. Every year, with the coming of the last month of the lunar year,
the holiday spirit fills the land. Laba Festival, which falls on the eighth day
of the twelfth lunar month, marks the official start of Spring Festival.
1-1 Story
1-1-1 Origins and Legends
The Laba Festival falls on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. This
holiday may be traced back to the ancient Chinese custom of sacrificing game to
the ancestors during the last month of the lunar year. Following the ritual, the
participants feasted together on the sacrificial meat in an early expression of
the Chinese tradition of communal eating. The Laba Festival is popularly
referred to as Laji Festival (End-of-Year Sacrifice Festival), another
indication of its ancient origins and association with early sacrificial
rituals. It is also said that Sakyamuni Buddha attained enlightenment on the
eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. As a result, with the introduction of Buddhism
to China, the Laba Festival also became known as the Day of Enlightenment.
Eating porridge on the Laba Festival is a very old tradition. As Buddhism
became integrated into Chinese society, "Laba porridge" became known as "Buddha
porridge," in commemoration of the date of Buddha's enlightenment. Legend has it
that after Sakyamuni left secular life to become a monk, he meditated so deeply
that he often forgot to eat. Once, when he was close to dying of starvation, he
encountered a woman tending her flock. The woman saved his life by feeding him
rice porridge with milk, enabling him to continue meditating and attain
enlightenment on the day of Laba Festival. In order to commemorate this
incident, every year at the Laba Festival Buddhists eat Laba porridge, also
known as Buddha porridge. Many versions of the legends concerning the origins of
Laba Festival exist in different regions of China.
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