Tag: Valentine’s day

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Qi Xi Festival

hearts and flowers white

The QiXi festival is known by several other names, including the Double Seventh Festival, Qiqiao, Chinese Valentine and the Festival of Young Girls. It is celebrated on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month, which this year is today, 20th August 2015.

It celebrates the legend of Niu Lang and Zhi Nu, and for this reason it has come to be associated with love and romance.

Traditionally the festival was a time when young girls would pray for good skills in needlework which would help them to find a good husband. They have various sewing competitions, such as making things and threading needles as quickly as possible by moonlight or candlelight.

One custom is to drop a needle into water. If it floats the girl is already highly skilled at needlework; if it sinks she needs more practice. Another is for 7 close female friends to make dumplings together. They place a needle, a copper coin and a date into three of the dumplings and then eat them. Whoever finds the needle with be blessed with good needlework skills. The girl who finds the coin will be wealthy, and the one who finds the date will have an early marriage.

In some parts of China, children would hang flowers from the horns of oxen to celebrate the old ox in the legend.

Today the festival is heavily influenced by western traditions and so it is celebrated in the same way as St Valentine’s Day, with flowers and chocolates being exchanged.

Related post: Chinese New Year

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What are the origins of Valentine’s Day?

heartToday is Valentine’s Day so I thought it was a good opportunity to explore the origins of this day.

Why do we celebrate Valentine’s Day on the 14th February?

There have been several St Valentine’s throughout history, but the most likely one to be commemorated was a Roman priest who is purported to have conducted secret marriage ceremonies for soldiers. At the time soldiers were forbidden to marry because it was believed domestic bliss would reduce their efficiency as soldiers.

When he was found out, he was imprisoned.  The story goes that he fell in love with the jailer’s daughter, and on the eve of his death wrote her a letter signed “from your Valentine”.

However, Valentine’s Day wasn’t associated with romance until Chaucer’s time when he wrote about it being the day that birds chose their mates. February is early though for birds to begin mating, so why is February 14th the date chosen for Valentine’s Day?

One possibility is that it is the anniversary of St Valentine’s death. The other is that the date was chosen to coincide with a festival that was already taking place. The festival of Lupercalia was a pagan fertility festival that took place between 13th-15th February to celebrate the coming of spring. As many Christian and pagan festivals were amalgamated by the Romans, this is a likely explanation.