A Pagan Festival

Even when I was holidaying in Makasar, Sulawesi, I had received a Winter Solstice Festival greeting from Peoh Lam. Greetings for Winter Solstice festival or The Extreme of Winter ( 冬至) ( Dōng zhì) which is one of the most important festivals celebrated by the Chinese and other East Asians like the Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese must be a novelty, at least to me. People generally sent greetings during Chinese New Year but with the advent of the mobile phones, all sorts of greetings for all sorts of festivals pass through the phones in text messages and while it delighted me so, I suppose it would delight the telephone company even more! The Winter Solstice Festival, by the way is celebrated during the dongzhi solar term on or around December 21 when sunshine is weakest and daylight shortest. For the Chinese, the origins of this festival can be traced back to the yin and yang philosophy of balance and harmony in the cosmos. The days following the celebration will be longer daylight hours and the philosophical significance of this is symbolized by the I Ching hexagram fù (復, "Returning"). The Winter Solstice is an important event in many other cultures too and the Kalash of Pakistan, Saami -the indigenous people of Finland, Denmark and Sweden, the Zoroastrian, the Incas and even Christians celebrate it. The Christians of course celebrate the Winter Solstice as Christmas or Christ's Mass, which falling on December 25 is supposed to be the birth of Jesus but is also the winter solstice on the Julian Calendar. At its infancy, the festival was banned by the Catholic Church as a pagan practice stemming out of the Sol Invictus celebrations but Christian churches eventually recognized the sustained practices as a Christian festival. Pagan or not, the Chinese especially those from the South, both in and out of China will make and eat Tangyuan (湯圓) or balls of glutinous rice, which symbolize reunion this coming Dongzhi Festival and most definitely, in future ones too...

Now, chew on some Tang Yuan..