My Mid-Autumn Festival Message

This coming full moon festival, when the moon is at its roundest and brightest, who will you be thinking of? Regardless of who is with you or around you, who will be on your mind?

For thousands of years, the Chinese people have related the fullness of the moon to the symbolism of reunion between loved ones, and the Mid-Autumn Festival is commemorated based on that principle. Celebrated during the period of the Autumn Equinox, the moon is said to be at its most beautiful.

I have always regarded the Mid-Autumn Festival as the most romantic time of the year. I do not know why but it is almost as though I have had a past life that had celebrated Valentines Day during the Mooncake festival. I stared at the full, round moon and wished that the person who is right for me would be staring at the same moon at the exact same time. Despite all that daydreams, I always seem to get disastrous results during the Mid-Autumn festival when I am with my loved one or when I am not. Either we end up arguing or we end up not being with each other at all. Perhaps it is the fact that I expect too much from the relationship during this time of the year. Perhaps my past life had too good a Mooncake festival celebration that I could not reenact those romantic moments. So, I can only thank the Goddess of Mid-Autumn (if there ever is one) that despite all this, I could still be with the ones I love next, which is my family and relatives, basking under the bright moonrays, savouring the sweet elixir of lotus seed paste in the mooncakes and relishing the dim light emanating from the candles in the lanterns.

How did the Mooncake festival come by? It is said that during the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960-1280), the Chinese people were unhappy being under the control of Mongolia, and thus were intent in orchestrating a surprise rebellion. With the Moon Festival approaching, the leaders of the rebellion took hold of this opportunity and ordered the making of special cakes that were going to function as a secret message conveyor. Messages were scribbled onto tiny pieces of paper and hidden within these cakes and then passed onto others, on the pretext of being a season gift. On the night of the Moon Festival, the rebels succeeded in their mission and overthrew the government. Moon cakes are thus eaten in commemoration of this awe-inspiring event after.

Thus, I have come up with a message to be inscribed of my mooncake if I was to make one. This would be it: "In the final analysis of our lives, when the 2-do-lists are no more, when the frenzy is finished, when our mailboxes are empty; the only thing that will have any lasting value is whether we've loved others & whether they've loved us."