On October 1, 2020, a super special day that is celebrated by many East and Southeast Asian cultures took place. When I was growing up, I called it the Mooncake or Full Moon Day, but it’s more commonly known as the Mid-Autumn Festival. Every year, sometime around September or October (but really August according to the lunar calendar), my parents would purchase boxes and boxes of delicious mooncakes. These miniature treats shaped like a full moon look exactly like their name, with fillings that vary from my favorite, lotus paste, to ham with five different nuts to my least favorite but the most iconic flavor, lotus paste with salted egg yolk. They’d also arrange small dishes, including a special kind of tea we would drink for good health and luck, boiled peanuts, boiled taro roots, boiled water caltrop (a kind of nut), and a variety of fruits. Then, we’d burn incense and small stacks of ceremonial papers to give thanks to the moon goddess while eating the dishes that were prepared.
While I grew up passively stuffing my face with dozens of mooncakes, following the protocols of burning incense, and giving a short prayer to the full moon, this year hit me a bit differently. Now that I’m finally home around this time of year again celebrating the holiday with my family, I became curious about everything — the meaning behind this day, how it came to be, and how my parents celebrated it when they were kids in Vietnam and China.
Although my parents didn’t know the true meaning behind the day themselves, it was interesting to hear more about their childhood as we sat on the porch, eating the little snacks we prepared and staring at the full moon. For them, Mooncake Day was about everyone getting together, having a good time, and celebrating the full moon and moon goddess for good health, luck, and happiness. Back then, it wasn’t strange to see every family in the neighborhood sitting outside of their homes on this day. Everyone celebrated the holiday together as if they were just one big family: sitting outside, eating, and talking amongst themselves — family or not. While the older folks chit-chatted with others as the night went on, the children would be running around and playing with one another. Since times were rough back then, mooncakes were really special treats for the family. My dad explained that while my siblings and I grew up having a whole mooncake to ourselves, my parents and their families would have to split a single mooncake, which isn’t big at all, into 10 pieces just so everyone could have a bite.
Hearing their stories made me realize a few things:
#1: I really don’t know anything about my culture’s traditions.
#2: I really need to look into them.
And #3: My parents really lived during such a different and difficult time compared to me and my siblings.
Still curious about the real meaning of the Mooncake Day, I instinctively Googled the Mid-Autumn Festival and as usual, dozens of answers popped up. The few that I’ve read included a legend about the Moon goddess, Chang’e, who took the elixir of immortality to prevent it from getting into the wrong hands and whose husband helped save people from the heat of the nine suns. Others explained that it’s to celebrate a good harvest season or the full moon, which is said to take place on the 15th of the 8th month on the lunar calendar and represent unity, togetherness, and perfection. While I don’t know how accurate these answers are, it was nice reading about them and getting to know my culture’s traditions a tiny bit better!