During the Qingming Festival, the rain is pouring, and the pedestrians on the road want to break their souls. This is the Sentence written by the Tang Dynasty poet Du Mu more than a thousand years ago, time flies like a white colt, but every time it comes to the Qingming Season, the scenes in Du Mu's poems will always be endlessly reproduced, because the Qingming Festival is an important festival for Chinese to remember the ancestors and promote filial piety, even if it is another thousand years and ten thousand years, such scenes will still be passed down from generation to generation.
clear and bright
The ancients believed that Qingming was the season when all things were full of vitality and new, so it was also a good day to travel close to nature.
Of course, Qingming tomb sweeping ancestor worship is the most important theme of this festival, in this ancient and solemn festival, there are many traditional customs and taboos, about the Qingming sacrifice sweep, folk legend has such a saying: the grave must worship five generations, sweeping the tomb can not be premature.
The "five generations" refer to the five generations from our own counts, followed by the father, the grandfather, the great-grandfather, and finally the high ancestor, that is, according to tradition, we must start from the old ancestor (that is, the high ancestor) of the largest generation when worshiping.
So why five generations, not eight or ten generations? This is because in the past there was also a saying called "people go through five generations to raise another grave", which was also discussed in our previous articles, because in the previous family ancestral hall, usually only the tablets of the high ancestors were placed at most, and the family cemetery, when accepted to the fifth generation, must have another ancestral grave.
The ancients believed that the ancestors' protection of future generations was also limited to five generations, and after more than five generations, the old ancestors did not have to care about these descendants of six generations and seven generations, and the descendants who began from six generations naturally did not need to worship the ancestors of the six generations.
This principle also applies to the Qingming sacrifice sweep, so there is a saying that "the grave must be worshiped for five generations", but after entering the modern era, the society has undergone earth-shaking changes, and now even many people's ancestral graves of more than three generations have long disappeared, and they can only remember the ancestors while giving the relatives to worship and sweep, which is also a responsibility of filial piety.
Then, when sweeping the Qingming Festival, it should be noted that "the tomb sweeping cannot be premature", which is a taboo about the time of tomb sweeping. At that time, the uncle is the time from one o'clock to three o'clock in the afternoon, also known as "sun falling", that is, when the sun begins to set in the west. Before the time, it was called noon, which was the time of day when the yang qi was at its peak, and in ancient times, it was three o'clock in the afternoon to behead a prisoner.
Then, after entering the untimely, the yang qi subsides, and people are not suitable for staying in such a shady place as the cemetery, so it is said that "the tomb sweeping cannot be too late."
But such an explanation, inevitably a little idealistic color, in fact, the real reason is because the ancient cemetery, most of them are buried in the mountains far from human habitation, and the road up the mountain is often bumpy and bumpy, by three o'clock in the afternoon if you have not returned, it may encounter danger, so generally choose to sweep the tomb in the morning, and try to return at noon, "sweeping the tomb can not be timely", in fact, for safety considerations.
Qingming is coming, I hope that everyone must love the environmental protection ecology when making sacrifices, and let us jointly advocate civilized ancestor worship.