It's Christmas again, the merchants are very busy, the young people like it, of course, in recent years there have also been some voices to express opposition to the festival, especially this festival also has a distinct religious background, in a country with atheism as the official ideology, which seems quite out of place. Today we will not talk about these controversies, let's talk about a few things when we first entered China at Christmas. We all know that the Christian Christmas festival entered China with the exchanges between China and the West in modern times, and it has been more than a hundred years. As far as the word Christmas is concerned, in fact, before modern times, it was also in China. So what did Christmas mean in ancient China? Why doesn't anyone know now? Let's talk about these issues today.
Is Christmas the "Western Winter Solstice"?
It may be really difficult to say that the specific year of Christmas entered China, after all, in ancient society, there were also some Catholic missionaries who came to China to preach, did they ever spend Christmas in China? This is really unclear. However, it is certain that Christmas has entered China more formally, and has gradually expanded from the Westerners to the Chinese people, which is a matter of modern times. Among them, as one of the earliest cities to open up, Shanghai is definitely the first to bear the brunt. Flipping through the "Declaration" in the late 19th century, you can see that there are many reports of Westerners spending Christmas in Shanghai at that time, but these reports mention a very interesting point, that is, the Chinese at that time, regarded this Christmas of foreigners as the "Western Winter Solstice". Why is there such an understanding? There are several reasons for this.
The first is the proximity of time. In the Case of the Gregorian calendar, the winter solstice in the traditional Chinese solar terms is generally on December 21 or 22, although the traditional Chinese lunar calendar is used, but the day of the winter solstice is relatively fixed. Then Christmas is fixed 3-4 days after the winter solstice. It is only natural for ordinary Chinese people to think that this may be westerners spending the winter solstice, a few days later than us.
The second is the content of some activities. The winter solstice in China is traditionally not only a festival, but also an important festival, and the folk proverb even has the saying that "the winter solstice is as big as the year". For a longer period of time in history, because the November where the winter solstice is located is set as the first year (weekly calendar), the winter solstice really assumes the role of the year. Although Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty set the "Taichu Calendar" and began with January as the first year, the special status of the winter solstice was retained. On the day of the winter solstice, there are official sacrifice activities, banquets and holidays, and folk also have family ancestor worship, reunion feasts and other activities and customs, and even in some places, the importance of the winter solstice is not lost to the Spring Festival. The customs of these officials and people were still preserved until the end of the Qing Dynasty. At the beginning of Christmas's entry into China, it was mainly popular among foreigners in China. During the festival, these foreigners often have some gatherings, dress-up residences, family reunion meals and other activities, and the Chinese people do not understand the religious content here, but they seem to think that it is similar to our Chinese winter solstice festival, so there is this misunderstanding.
The winter solstice is as big as an annual
Later, with the deepening of Cultural Exchanges between China and foreign countries, more and more Chinese elites came into contact with Western society and culture, and after returning to China, they introduced themselves to more and more Chinese, and it was only after the Republic of China that the original meaning of Christmas was known to more and more ordinary Chinese people, and people began to call it "Jesus Christmas" or "Jesus' Birthday", referred to as "Christmas of Jesus". Therefore, in recent years, some neo-Confucian scholars have advocated changing Christmas to "Christmas" and restoring the traditional Chinese Christmas, which also has a certain basis. As for what is traditional Chinese Christmas? Let's talk about it later.
II. The "Christmas" of Ancient China
If we search for various traditional documents in ancient China, we will find that the word "Christmas" was used as early as the Tang Dynasty, for example, the great poet Li Bai wrote in an inscription: "The name of the long day will be passed on endlessly, and the festival of Christmas will also be celebrated." "Of course, it is conceivable that this Christmas, and the Christian Christmas, do not mean the same thing. To sum up, the ancient Chinese use of the word "Christmas" generally has three meanings.
The first is the birthday of the emperor or empress. In ancient China, emperors were called Shengshang, and the birthday of the Shengshang was naturally Christmas. The previous Christmas Festival that Li Bai said was Tang Xuanzong's birthday. There are also some times when the birthday of the emperor's mother, the empress dowager, is also known as Christmas, and the Song Dynasty Qin Guan's "Daihe Kuncheng Festival Table" has a saying: "Stealing the Christmas period, Yan Qiu is in the order..." And so on, Kuncheng Festival is the birthday of the empress. The birthdays of the emperor and empress dowager were called Christmas or Christmas, and this practice continued until the Ming and Qing dynasties. However, in ancient China, there have been many names for the emperor's birthday, such as Tianchang Festival, Wanshou Festival, Qianqiu Festival, etc., and Christmas is one of the names, not particularly prominent.
Halloween in costume dramas
The second use is that in various traditional Chinese religions such as Buddhism and Taoism, there are some important immortals, ancestors and other important characters, and their birthdays are also called Christmas by believers. The character image involved here is very complicated, because ancient China was a polytheistic belief, there are many chaotic characters in various religious genealogies, and many of the birthdays of gods and immortals can be called Christmas, such as "Christmas of the Ten Heavenly Lords" and "Christmas of the Great King of the Heavens". Later, some folk local gods, the local people in the process of offering them incense also completed a variety of "human settings", including birthdays, experiences, etc., so these local gods also have their own "Christmas".
The third is the birth of Confucius. Confucius, as the founding ancestor of Confucianism, continued to rise in later generations with the status of Confucianism, and the status of Confucius was also constantly raised. The titles added to Confucius by successive dynasties have also become more and more revered, and the descendants of Confucius after Emperor Renzong of Song have been given the title of "Yan Sheng Gong", and Confucius has been honored as a "saint" by the readers and rulers of successive generations. After the Ming and Qing dynasties, the official respect for Confucius reached an incomparable point, and the Qing Dynasty even designated the 27th day of Confucius's birth as a major ceremony at the national level, which became the national legal "Christmas".
Matsuri
Why is Christmas gone in China?
These three kinds of Christmas in China have gradually declined after entering the Republic of China, so that many friends today have not heard of it. There are certainly some reasons for this.
First of all, the emperor's birthday is a Christmas, in 1911, the Xinhai Revolution sounded a cannon, officially ended more than 2,000 years of feudal imperialism, the emperor is gone, the so-called "Christmas" naturally no longer exists. Later, although Puyi survived for a few more years in puppet Manchukuo and restored the so-called emperor system, we all know that it was a deformed product of the war of aggression and disappeared with the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan.
Christmas in traditional religions needless to say, declined with the decline of traditional religions. As for Confucius's birthday, it has changed with the change in the official political positioning of Confucius after the Republic of China, but it has maintained a remnant among overseas Confucian intellectuals. In recent years, with the continuous promotion of traditional culture by the state, the status of Confucius has also been restored to a certain extent, and every year on the 28th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, there is also a ceremony to worship Confucius in Qufu, the hometown of Confucius, which has become an important cultural activity in the local area. However, the re-naming of Confucius's birthday as "Christmas" and the change of Christian Christmas back to "Christmas" have been limited to the small circle of some Neo-Confucian scholars and have not formed a greater influence.
For the vast majority of Chinese people today, Christmas is December 25 every year, which is a Western holiday.
Wen Shijun said
Back to the controversy mentioned at the beginning: Chinese should christmas? This is not a matter of having to choose one over the other. However, in today's field of public opinion, forcing readers to choose one or the other on issues that do not have to choose one or the other is a common means of creating a tear in public opinion. For the vast majority of Chinese, they can choose whether to live Christmas and how to spend Christmas according to their own wishes. Among the many voices opposing Christmas, there is a very deceptive voice, they believe that Christmas has led to the snubbing of Traditional Chinese festivals (such as the Spring Festival), which is not conducive to the inheritance of Traditional Chinese Festivals. In fact, through the above we review the process of Christmas entering China, and the decline of traditional Chinese "Christmas", we can see that the decline of traditional Chinese festivals is because everyone celebrates foreign festivals?
The decline of Traditional Chinese festivals is, in the final analysis, our traditional festivals, and the traditional cultural connotations of their festivals are increasingly far away from the living environment of modern people. For example, some representative activities of the traditional Spring Festival, visiting relatives and friends, worshiping ancestors, clan reunions, feasting and entertainment, why have these activities become less attractive, especially young people?
These problems may be complicated to explain, but the most intuitive reason is that young people who are baptized by massive amounts of information every day, who have grown up in a consumerist culture and lived an atomized and personalized life in the city, are not used to this! Moreover, some of the festivals and customs of traditional festivals have secular functions. Whether it is the spiritual level of ancestor worship or the actual clan activities, it has practical significance. But the significance of this reality is also fading today. For more and more modern people, what is the purpose of ancestor worship? What is the use of clans?
Therefore, the inheritance of traditional festival culture requires the extradition of modernity. It is necessary to explore the elements of traditional festivals that conform to the modern social environment, present them in a way that conforms to the aesthetics of modern people, and organize the festivals in a more modern way. Otherwise, even if a paper law prohibits Christmas, people will not be interested in the old Spring Festival.
The so-called cultural self-confidence, the key is that we ourselves should tell the Chinese story well, rather than shutting up the people who tell foreign stories. After all, in such an open world, who can you shut down?
bibliography:
1. Zhang Bofeng, "'Christmas' in China: The Social and Cultural Migration Behind a Name", Cultural Heritage, 2014.1.
2. Shao Zhixuan, "From "Foreign Winter Solstice" to "Christmas": The Festiveization of Jesus' Birthday in Modern China", Academic Monthly, 2012.12.
(Author: Haoran Wenshi Yiming Teacher)
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