La Ba gruel and Chinese New Year

The 8th of December of every lunar year is La Ba festival of Chinese. On this day, every Chinese eats La Ba gruel. It is said that this festival was sourced from the worship to the eight agricultural Gods. In December most of the agricultural works of a year is finished, so people worship the agricultural Gods to appreciate their blessing in the past year and pray for good luck in the next year. Ancient Chinese worshiped also their ancestors on this day.

In the Northern and Southern dynasties (420-587 AD), Buddhism bloomed in China. It is said that the 8th of December is the day Sakyamuni became Buddhar, before he became Buddhar he thought in a mountain for six years and ate very little food very day, so he was very thin and weak. One day a shepherdess met him and gave him milk gruel made of cow milk, horse milk and broken rice. Sakyamuni ate the gruel and got energy. Short time later he found the enlightenment and became Buddhar. Because of the story, Chinese buddhistic monks in the Northern and Southern dynasties cooked gruel on the 8th of December every year and share it with both buddhists and common people to preach the virtue of being helpful. Gradually, this buddhistic tradition spreaded and became a custom among folk. Since Song dynasty (960-1279) eating La Ba gruel has become the most important activity for Chinese on this day, and tempels and many rich persons donate free La Ba gruel to those who don't have it. This day got the name as La Ba festival.

The materials used to make La Ba gruel are different from region to region. La Ba gruel in Beijing region can contains several different kinds of rice, millet, red bean, peanut, date, pine nut, almond, pumpkin seed, rape, sugar, etc. La Ba gruel in Zhejiang province can contains bacon, shrimp and chicken meat, except nut, rice and millet. In fact, La Ba gruel tastes even different from family to family because of different recipes. The only one common character of different La Ba gruel is that La Ba gruel must contain at least eight kinds of materials.

When La Ba festival is finished, people begin to prepare for celebrating lunar new year. Many Chinese think that celebration prepartion is a part of the celebration. Many other Chinese even think that La Ba festival is also a part of Chinese New Year celebration. They think La Ba festival is the real beginning of Chinese New Year celebration.  

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