Mid-autumn Festival Around the World
People from around the world celebrate this festival in different ways; it’s also called the Lantern Festival or the Mooncake Festival. The mid-autumn festival is celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month every year according to the Chinese lunar calendar.
To date, this remains one of the most significant Chinese holidays. As a matter of fact, it’s the second most popular holiday, after the Chinese New Year, which is why you’ll see that it’s celebrated in other Asian countries, particularly in Southeast and East Asian countries. However, there may be certain differences in how it is celebrated in these regions.
For example, in Malaysia, the mid-autumn festival is celebrated mostly by gifting and eating mooncakes. At night, different families come together to light lanterns and walk around their respective neighbourhoods. To help you understand the mid-autumn festival better, here’s an overview of how it is celebrated in different countries.
Mid-autumn Festival in China
As mentioned earlier, this is one of the most important festivals that is celebrated in China, and to mark the festival, families come together to fancy the harvest of the bright mid-autumn harvest moon. They do this while eating pomelos and mooncakes.
There are other fun and exciting activities that they engage in, and these include releasing sky lanterns, watching the tides in seaside regions, guessing riddles on lanterns, and having a glass of fragrant wine.
Mid-autumn Festival in Japan
Even though the celebration is on the same day in Japan, it’s marked differently. The first thing you should note is that in Japan, it’s known as the Otsukimi or Tsukimi festival. This is one of the oldest festivals celebrated in the region. It mostly involves holding a Moon Appreciation Party involving different guests gathering together to enjoy yummy rice cases known as Tsukimi Dango as they admire the Moon.
During the night of the mid-autumn festival, people give taros, wine, fruits, and Tsukimi Dango as offerings as they admire the Moon. It also includes praying for a better harvest each year.
In most Japanese homes, you’ll find different decorative patterns, which mostly comprise silver-white pampas grass. This is considered a form of token that is offered to the Moon God, who is believed to guard crops. It’s also believed to eliminate evil spirits.
However, in recent times, you’ll find that most of these traditions are not observed by younger generations.
Mid-autumn Festival in South Korea
Like in other countries, the mid-autumn festival is equally a popular event in South Korea. This is also known as Chuseok or Thanksgiving Day. During the festival, locals get to enjoy a three-day public holiday, which gives them the opportunity to travel to their hometowns to spend time with their families.
It’s more like a family reunion during which they feast on different traditional food. Examples are rice wines, taro soup, Hangwa cakes, rice cakes, and many more.
These families also use this as an opportunity to take care of the graves of their ancestors. The interesting part is the discount that people get to enjoy during the celebration. Businesses use this discount to entice customers to do business with them, like gifts. The gifts are usually necessities like cooking utensils, nutritional products, organic foods, and even cooking oil.
Mid-autumn Festival in Thailand
Another Asian country that marks this celebration is Thailand, and according to their legends, it’s a time when eight immortals visited the Moon Palace. The aim of their visit was to send birthday greetings and peach-shaped cakes to Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy. This was done on the night of the mid-autumn festival.
On the festival, you’ll notice that one of the most popular food that people use is peach-shaped cakes. It has grown popular and gained so much relevance to date. Another interesting thing to note is that families also come together to pray to the Moon during the festival. After that, they sit and enjoy a nice meal together while exchanging well wishes with each other.
In addition, locals in different parts of the country also gift and eat fruits or mooncakes with friends and families. The festival is also popular among tourists in Urban Thai, which is amazing.
Mid-autumn Festival in the Philippines
During the mid-autumn festival, different colonies and Chinese towns across the countries used decorations like banners and lanterns to mark the festival. You’ll also find different variety of mooncake flavours in most shops too.
In the Philippines, it’s a big event that involves Chinese clothing parades, fancy car parades, lantern parades, and dragon dance parades.
Mid-autumn Festival in Vietnam
In Vietnam, the celebration is centered on young children, and at the festival, you’ll find different parents giving gifts to their children, particularly snacks and toys they like. For adults, it mostly involves feasts on different mooncake flavors, while the kids have fun and play with toys and carp-shaped lanterns.
In Vietnam, one of the things you’ll notice at the mid-autumn festival is water puppet shows and lion dance performances, which are also for everyone to enjoy. Also, different locals participate in competitions involving making beautiful lanterns.
Mid-autumn Festival in Hong Kong
The celebration is a bit different in Hong Kong, especially since it is not actually celebrated on the official date. You might be wondering why they do it this way in Hong Kong. It’s a strategy to allow them to enjoy a good sleep after spending an exciting moment the previous night.
The celebration is similar in Singapore and Malaysia and equally involves gifting and eating mooncakes, watching dragon and lion dance performances, and playing with lanterns. Another thing to note is that families also enjoy barbecue sessions and family reunions with friends.
Ultimately, the time is set aside for them to admire the full Moon and also enjoy the amazing view of Victoria Harbor.
Mid-autumn Festival to Taiwan
The festival is similar to how it is marked in Hong Kong. In Taiwan, there’s a great love for barbecue, especially during the mid-autumn celebration. This is why they also like to eat pomelos and mooncakes. One unique thing that the locals engage in is participating in mooncake betting. It’s worth mentioning that mooncake betting was invented by Zheng Chenggong.
To play the game, six dice and used, and the person that gets an auspicious number earns some mooncakes. There are different customs that are common in Taiwan, and another one involves praying to Tudigong for the autumn harvest. This is common with farmers.
Mid-Autumn Free Illustrations for Download
We have highlighted so many ways people mark the festival in different parts of the world. However, in addition to these celebrations in different parts of the world, there are still ways people mark the celebrations in different parts of the world, especially on social media.
This mostly involves the use of illustrations, and creativity has a fundamental part to play in this. Basically, there are so many ways you can use illustrations to mark mid-autumn celebrations.
Here’s an overview of some ways you can use illustrations at the mid-autumn festival:
- Social Media Post: At the festival, you might want to send out warm wishes to your friends and loved ones, and this is the part where these illustrations will come in really handy for you. You only need a place where you can have access to these illustrations so you can use them.
- Background Images: Whether it’s for your business website or for any other purposes, you’ll need illustrations to use as background images on mid-autumn festivals. This is also a strategy that equally helps to create awareness about the festival and also enlighten people on how it is celebrated across the world.
- On Gift Items: From everything we have mentioned earlier, you’ll find that one of the common things is to give gift items to kids, friends, and family members. If you’re planning to give someone a gift on this special day, you should consider including an illustration about the festival to make it more beautiful.
- For Design: There are so many other reasons to create a design for the mid-autumn festival, and for this, you’ll require different illustrations and vector images. Again, this is to make the design beautiful and also enhance its visual appeal.
These are only some of the ways you can use illustrations during the festival. With that said, you might start to wonder where you can get these illustrations from. While there are different stock illustration platforms that you can check, we recommend going through illustAC to find all the illustrations you’ll need.
This is a rapidly growing stock platform, and when it comes to illustrations for the mid-autumn festival, it’s the best option you have. What’s certain is that you won’t run out of options when you use this platform.
Other Harvest Festivals to Note
We have gone through the basic things you should know about how the mid-autumn festival is celebrated in different parts of Asia. In addition, we also highlighted the importance of illustrations and how you can use them to mark the festival.
But that’s not all. In addition to the mid-autumn festival, there are so many other harvest festivals that you should know, and they include the following:
Pongal
This is a celebration to mark the rice harvest period, and it mostly takes place in Southeast Asian countries. The celebration takes place during the winter solstice, and the aim is to celebrate the sunlight and the return of longer days.
Another thing to note about the festival is that it is aimed at dedicating the Hindu sun god, Surya. Also, the Pongal celebration takes place on January 14. Another thing you should know is that the word Pongal is derived from a Tamil word, which means overflow, to boil. It’s also the name used in describing rice dishes.
Rice Harvest Festival
Peculiar to Indonesia, this is also a celebration that is marked in May and in June to celebrate the rice Harvest. It’s worth noting that rice generally symbolizes prosperity and nourishment to the locals. This is why they observe this festival to honor Dewi Sri, the rice goddess that made it possible for them to pull the rice harvest
Basically, what happens during the festival is that farmers will lay up temples and mini shrines in fields and offer their rice stalks. This is then followed by the annual Negara Bull Races, and the aim is to show how strong these bulls are as they are placed at auction.
Sukkoth
Another festival that you should know about is the Sukkoth festival, which many people know as the Festival of Shelters or Feast of Booths. It’s a Jewish holiday that is marked on the 15th day of the seventh month of the Jewish lunisolar calendar. On the 8th day of the festival, people gather to thank the God of harvest.
People who belong to the Jewish faith during this time erect special huts or booths in remembrance of the period of Exodus in Hebrew scriptures.
Yam Festival
The last festival we’ll talk about is the Yam Festival, which is peculiar to the Ewe people in Ghana, and this is aimed at averting famine in coming years. The Yam Festival is mostly celebrating towards the end of the rainy season and when the first sight of yam is seen.
There’s no fixed time for the festival, as it varies according to region. However, this is mostly within August or September every year. The activities that take place during the event include parades and dances for everyone to enjoy.
Conclusion
There you have it, all you should know about the mid-autumn festival and how it is celebrated in different parts of the world. Check illustAC now for all the illustrations you’ll need to download during this period.
There are so many other festivals in different parts of the world, and we have also covered some of these festivals in this article.
For emphasis, illustAC is the best option you have when it comes to downloading illustrations for both commercials and for personal uses, which is why you should check the platform now.