A message pops into my email inbox from Spring, our lovely China liaison officer:
"Such a lovely morning brings us the Chinese traditional Mid-Autumn Festival today! It falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar, a date when the moon is at its fullest and brightest for people to celebrate the abundance of the summer’s harvest.
In China, it is also known as the Moon Festival, dating back over 3,000 years to China’s Zhou Dynasty. It is one of the three most important holidays in Chinese tradition: the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Lantern Festival.
Traditionally, on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Chinese family members will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes together.
Moon cakes are usually round-shaped with many different varieties of fillings. They refer to peace, harmony and perfection.
Chinese people believe that viewing the full moon delivers the best wishes and love to their separated family members and eating moon cakes brings good luck to themselves."
Spring also brings round moon cakes for everyone. Hoorah!
So, Happy Moon Festival everyone.
Make sure you go outside and view the full moon tonight.
And no howling.
13 comments:
Howling is good for a cranky soul. I plan to howl tomorrow night.
i am in dire need of good luck...but where can i find moon cakes in savannah???????
Kate: get out there and howl the moon out of the sky.
Savannah: Go to the nearest Chinese restaurant and kick'em with your cast until they hand some over.
I'll be wishing you good luck tonight.
Well, sometimes howling just can't be helped.
I'll make sure to step outside and marvel over the moon this evening.
I get the strange feeling I've befriended a bunch of lycanthropes.
Yikes!
My daughter was howling at the moon last night. We discourage that sort of thing but can't control it when the fangs come out.
Moon cakes...what a lovely tradition! Instead of war, "Let them eat cake."
Hee hee. Lycanthropy abounds, it seems.
I'd better watch out when I'm gazing at the moon tonight.
My Da used to insist that we all go outside and dance together under a full moon. I remember waltzing all over the yard with him.
Maybe the Irish and the Chinese aren't as far apart as you'd think. We are all related...
And that is about as sentimental as I plan to get today. I have a class to teach tonight and I wonder if have of the kids in those night classes know just how much their instructors don't want to be there either.....
But, maybe when I get home, if Liv is still awake, I'll dance with her under the full moon with Bing.
Jaysus...I can TOO spell half.
Hee hee. You can too, Maria.
The moon is lovely tonight.
Dance, dance, dance!
I'm going to drink a Blue Moon to celebrate.
The moon can move oceans; just imagine what it does to us! I can never sleep usually because I'm so enervated by the full moon that I have to do a million things at once - and then pay for it with pain later. M.B rarely sleeps well when there's a full moon and he's definitely crankier. Now perhaps that's what's got into Kate lately. Kate? Blame it on the full moon. And, down here, it is early-spring, not mid-harvest.
xxx Mme
"The moon can move oceans; just imagine what it does to us."
What a beautiful thought, Mme.
We are, after all, mostly water.
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