"With the style and the makeup is everywhere, the six streets are lighted up and children are making noise." The Lantern Festival is celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. The lively festivals and customs that have been passed down for thousands of years are the people's pursuit of hope and beauty from ancient times to the present. In ancient times, how did people celebrate the Lantern Festival?
The Lantern Festival originated in the Han Dynasty. It was sacrificed and blessings were offered on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, and the lantern market on the Shangyuan Festival had already formed a large scale, with a variety of varieties, and was extremely spectacular.
In the murals in the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, murals with the grand occasion of the Lantern Festival appear frequently, showing us the grand occasion of the Lantern Festival in different periods in history. The five-story lantern wheel in Cave 146 of Mogao Grottoes shows the exquisite design of Lantern Festival lanterns during the Five Dynasties, and the day and night are bright.
The dance and music pictures in the early Tang Dynasty were centered on the lantern building, with lamp wheels standing on both sides, and celestial girl lighting lamps, depicting the lively scene of singing and dancing in the palace of the prosperous Tang Dynasty. It is speculated that this scene of burning ten thousand lamps is very likely to occur during the Lantern Festival, that is, the Shangyuan Lantern Festival.
In the Ming Dynasty, the scale of the Shangyuan Festival Lantern Festival was unprecedented. It can be clearly seen from the Ming Dynasty painting "Shangyuan Lantern Color Picture" that the lanterns are in shapes such as fish, elephants, dragons, etc. The most shocking is the Aoshan Lantern composed of large lanterns. The pavilions and pavilions are vivid with clay sculptures and paper-made buildings and pavilions, expressing people's beautiful wishes for a good weather and a peaceful country in the new year.
