Is Lantern Festival a legal holiday?
No.
National statutory holidays include:New Year’s Day, Spring Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day, Labor Day, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day, and other festivals can not be regarded as legal holidays for the time being.
Lantern Festival mainly includes a series of traditional folk activities such as viewing lanterns, eating glutinous rice balls, solve riddles on the lanterns and setting off fireworks. In addition, traditional folk performances such as Youlong lanterns, lion dancing, walking on stilts, boating, yangko dancing and playing Taiping drums have been added to the Lantern Festival in many places. In June 2008, the Lantern Festival was selected as the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage.
Origin of Lantern Festival
Lantern Festival is a traditional festival in China, and the formation of Lantern Festival custom has a long process, which is rooted in the folk custom of turning on lights to pray for blessings. Turning on the lights to pray usually begins on the 14th night of the first month, and on the 15th night, it is a "positive light", and the people point lanterns, also known as "sending lanterns", to carry out the activities of offering sacrifices to the gods and praying for blessings. The introduction of Buddhist culture in the Eastern Han Dynasty also played an important role in promoting the formation of the Lantern Festival custom. During the Yongping period of Emperor Han Ming, in order to promote Buddhism, Emperor Han Ming ordered "burning lanterns to show Buddha" in the palace and temples on the fifteenth night of the first month. Therefore, the custom of burning lanterns on the fifteenth night of the first month gradually spread in China with the expansion of the influence of Buddhist culture and the addition of Taoist culture. In the Northern and Southern Dynasties, lantern festival lights gradually became a trend. Liang Wudi believes in Buddhism, and the palace is full of lights on the 15th day of the first month. During the Tang Dynasty, cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries became closer, Buddhism flourished, and officials and ordinary people generally "burned lanterns to offer sacrifices to the Buddha" on the fifteenth day of the first month, so Buddhist lights spread all over the people. Since the Tang Dynasty, it has been legal to display lanterns on Lantern Festival. The fifteenth day of the first lunar month is the Lantern Festival, also known as Shangyuan Festival, Lantern Festival and Lantern Festival. The first month is the first month of the lunar calendar. The ancients called the night "Xiao", so they called the fifteenth day of the first month "Lantern Festival".
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Tips: Search WeChat official account [Beijing local treasure] on WeChat, and reply to [Lantern Festival] in the chat dialog box after paying attention. You can get the recommendation of the ticket entrance of Beijing Lantern Festival activities, where to play (viewing lanterns+visiting temple fairs+solve riddles on the lanterns+enjoying flowers in the park) and other activities, self-driving/parent-child/Beijing outing and other theme routes.