Can I Have All The Festivals?

Last night we celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival. There are many stories to that festival as you can read from a blog Life Behind The Wall. I begun thinking how many festivals a year I could celebrate. I can choose from the Chinese and from the Finnish ones.

There are seven official public holidays in China according to Wikipedia. New Year, Chinese New Year, Qing Ming Festival, Labour Day, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day. Two of them are the same in Finland too (New Year and Labour Day).

Most of the holidays in Finland are religious nowadays, but they have their old meanings as well. Because I do not belong to any church I celebrate my holidays the old way. The biggest festivals besides the two mentioned above are: Easter, Midsummer, Independence Day and Christmas. The most important one being of course Christmas.

In total that would give me eleven holidays or festivals to celebrate. (Sure the Chinese National Day for me is just a holiday and don’t have any bigger meaning.) I like festivals because they keep the traditions alive and offer a nice break from the normal living with job or work. I would like to learn more about the stories behind the festivals so later I could pass that information on to the next generation.

Coming next is the National Day but I don’t have any plans yet. It would be nice to go travelling but at that time millions of Chinese are travelling too. I should also save some money for the rainy days to come.

Do you have any plans for the holidays? Or which festival is your favourite?