If you check your calendar, you’ll see that today is the first day of October…. what your calendar may not tell you is that today just also happens to be the Chinese Moon Festival. This is a holiday that has been celebrated for at least 3,000 years and is probably the second largest festival in China — after the Chinese New Year. The Moon Festival is also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival.
This is one of those holidays that you can’t ask your calendar app to remind you of every year — it is observed on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. It can occur in either September or early October in the Gregorian calendar, and this year (2020) it’s today.
This autumn festival falls during the full Moon nearest the fall equinox, which is said to be the brightest and roundest full moon. In China, festivities involve brightly colored lanterns, dances, games and other forms of entertainment. People celebrate into the evening to give thanks for the harvest and for being together, offering each other wishes for happiness and long life and remembering loved ones who live far away.
If you’d like to celebrate in a traditional way tonight, you can make some offerings to the Moon goddess Chang’e or share traditional mooncakes by moonlight. Mooncakes are round pastries that symbolize the full Moon and are often filled with red bean or lotus seed paste surrounding a salted egg yolk in the center.
But no matter how you celebrate, we’re off and running into October and this year we get to kick it off with the Moon Festival.
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