What are the customs of Laba Festival? What are the reasons for these customs?

What are the customs of Laba Festival? What are the reasons for these customs?
There are many festivals and customs in the twelfth month of the lunar calendar, Laba Festival is one of them. These festivals and customs have their own stories and reasons. What are the reasons for the customs of Laba Festival? The twelfth month of the lunar calendar is also known as the twelfth month. There are many customs and habits in the twelfth month. The Fortune Teller website has compiled a special topic on the twelfth month of the lunar calendar for you. Welcome to check it out.

Customs and Habits of Laba Festival

1. Eat Laba porridge . There is a custom of eating Laba porridge on the Laba day, which is also called seven treasures and five flavors porridge. The history of drinking Laba porridge in my country has been more than one thousand years. It first started in the Song Dynasty. On the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, people from the imperial court, government offices, temples and ordinary households all make Laba porridge. By the Qing Dynasty, the custom of drinking Laba porridge became even more popular. In the palace, the emperor, empress, princes, etc. would give Laba porridge to civil and military ministers, attendants and palace maids, and distribute rice, fruits, etc. to various temples for the monks to eat. In the folks, every household also makes Laba porridge to worship their ancestors; at the same time, the family gathers together to eat it and give gifts to relatives and friends.
Although the ingredients of Laba porridge vary in different regions, they basically include cereals such as rice, millet, glutinous rice, sorghum rice, black rice, and coix seed, beans such as soybeans, red beans, mung beans, kidney beans, and cowpeas, and dried fruits such as red dates, peanuts, lotus seeds, wolfberries, chestnuts, walnut kernels, almonds, longans, raisins, and ginkgo nuts. Laba porridge is not only a seasonal delicacy, but also a good health product, especially suitable for maintaining the spleen and stomach in cold weather.
2. Laba Festival is originally a day for sacrifice, and some places still retain this custom. The objects of worship include: Shennong, the god of thrift, Houji, the god of agriculture, the god of field officials, the gods of post and field, the people who open roads and draw boundaries, the cat and tiger gods, the gods of the neighborhood, the gods of water, the gods of insects, etc. The element of worshiping Buddha was later incorporated into the Tang and Song dynasties, and Buddhists had the custom of worshiping Buddha on this day. Some areas are very grand.
Since the pre-Qin period, there has been a custom of worshiping ancestors and gods and praying for a good harvest and good luck on Laba Festival. Moreover, Laba Festival is the day of Sakyamuni's enlightenment and is a festival for Buddhists. Therefore, offering sacrifices to gods, worshiping Buddha, and worshiping ancestors on the Laba Festival is a good omen to pray for the blessings of gods, Buddha, and ancestors.
3. In addition to sweet or salty Laba porridge , Laba garlic and Laba tofu, Shaanxi Laba noodles are of course indispensable. Before the sun comes out on the morning of the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month every year, every household in Shaanxi eats a bowl of steaming hot and fragrant Laba noodles.
Laba noodles were developed based on Laba porridge. In the past, people in Dali, Lintong and Fengxiang in Shaanxi cooked noodles to worship gods on the Laba Festival, so it was called "Laba noodles". At first, Laba noodles in rural Guanzhong were made by cooking millet and soybean porridge and noodles, and then eight kinds of vegetables and meat were cooked into sauce and noodles were cooked. Nowadays, with the improvement of living standards, people combine beans with cuisine, and use walnut kernels, sesame seeds, peanuts, lotus seeds, green vegetables, spinach, chrysanthemum, and fungus to cook together with noodles to make soup noodles, which is rich in nutrition and very delicious. As the twelfth lunar month approaches, the countryside begins to feel the flavor of the New Year. This smell comes from the fragrant "Laba dishes" and "Laba noodles".
4. Eating ice: The day before Laba Festival, people usually use steel basins to scoop water to freeze it. When Laba Festival comes, they take the ice out of the basins and break it into pieces. It is said that the ice on this day is magical and eating it will prevent stomachache for the next year. 5. Pickling Laba Garlic. Beijing and most areas in North China have the custom of pickling Laba garlic on this day. Laba garlic is garlic soaked in vinegar. Use purple garlic and rice vinegar. Remove the old skin of the garlic cloves, soak them in rice vinegar, put them into a small jar, seal the mouth and put them in a cold place until the garlic turns green.
In the old days, businesses would round up their accounts on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, taking stock of the year's accounts and figuring out the year's revenue, expenditure, profit and loss. Creditors will also remind those who owe them money to prepare to pay back the money on Laba Day. People pay attention to taboos in the twelfth lunar month, so they use the word "garlic", which has the same pronunciation as the word "suan", to replace the word "suan" in accounting. Therefore, although Laba garlic is delicious, it is not sold on the market. Every household makes their own Laba garlic and also calculates their own accounts to see how much they have spent in the year, how much they have saved, and how much money they should spend on buying new year goods.
6. Making Laba tofu is a folk custom in Qianxian County, Anhui Province. It is a local specialty. Homemade tofu can be dried and eaten later. The specific production process is as follows: Use high-quality soybeans to make tofu, spread the tofu with salt water, and slowly bake it under the gentle sun. "Laba tofu" is usually hung with straw ropes in a ventilated place to dry, and picked when eaten. It can generally be kept for three months without deteriorating or changing taste.
The finished product is as yellow and smooth as jade, soft in the mouth, salty but sweet, fragrant and fresh. It will be more delicious if you add dried shrimps and other ingredients during the drying process. It can be eaten as a single dish or paired with meat, and is delicious whether stir-fried or stewed. When entertaining distinguished guests, people in Yi County would carve it into the shapes of animals and flowers, drizzle it with sesame oil, mix it with onion, ginger, garlic and other condiments, and serve it as a cold dish, which would become a delicacy for banquets.

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