Does Tanabata have anything to do with the moon?

Tanabata is a traditional festival of Valentine's Day in China, also known as Georgie's Day, Georgie's Day or Seven Sisters's birthday. It originated in China and is a traditional festival in China and East Asian countries. It comes from the legend of the cowherd and the weaver girl, and is celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month.

Because the main participants in this day's activities are girls, the content of the festival activities is mainly begging skills, so people call this day "begging skills festival" or "daughter's day" or "daughter's day".

The moon changes according to the lunar calendar. On the first day of each month, the moon is the smallest, hook-shaped, and then gradually becomes round, reaching a circle on the fifteenth day, so the moon reaches a semicircle on the seventh and eighth days of each month.

Worship of natural phenomena

The ancient astrology culture in China has a long history and is profound. The ancients began to explore the mysteries of the universe from a very young age, and thus deduced a complete and profound star-watching culture. Cowherd and Weaver Girl is a typical example.

The legend of Cowherd and Weaver Girl on Tanabata originates from people's worship of natural phenomena. As early as ancient times, the ancients who pursued order not only planned the sky in an orderly way, but also corresponded the stars with the ground areas one by one. This correspondence is called "dividing stars" in astronomy and "dividing fields" underground.

Simply put, the ancients corresponded each constellation in the sky with the physical geographical area on the ground. The purpose of ancient star division and demarcation is mainly to cooperate with astrology theory for astronomical observation. In the ancient star system, "Taurus" consists of six stars, which are located on the east bank of the Milky Way, like two inverted triangles, which are very distinctive when going up and down, but the triangle above is bigger and brighter.

The small triangle below is located on the ecliptic. These stars make up a cow with two horns on its head but only three feet, so the ancients called it Petunia. There are nine little stars to the south of this cow, which constitutes the Tian Tian, where it cultivates. Looking further south, near the southern horizon, "Jiukan" has nine stars, which is a lowland for storing water and irrigating farmland.

The east of Niusu is next to the "Luo Yan" No.3 star, which is a water conservancy facility similar to a reservoir. The three stars of Vega are located in the north of Niusu, among which Vega I is the fifth brightest star in the whole day, second only to arcturus, so it is often called Vega directly. People refer to "Altair" and "Vega" as "Cowherd and Weaver Girl".