November 25th

Chinese Harvest Moon Festival, St. Catherine’s Day

 

It is around this time of the year that the Chinese celebrate their Harvest Moon Festival. According to Chinese beliefs, the moon influences the crops and is therefore held in high esteem, especially when it is full. The chief symbol of the Moon Festival is the “moon cake,” a small cake made in the shape of a moon. The cake is about an inch thick and filled with sweetened soy bean paste, whole egg yolks, and melon seeds. The cake is backed to a golden brown and served with pomelo, which is similar to a grapefruit except twice as large and very sweet.

Unlike a lot of Chinese festivals, which are preceded by days of preparation and often followed by days of recovery, the Moon Festival only lasts one day. Along with the moon cake, small figures of rabbits and other small animals are made into cookies and placed in small reed cages. The use of the rabbits has special significance. According to Chinese mythology, a rabbit lives in the moon, forever busy pounding out the elixir of life.

St. Catherine was one of the major female saints of the Middle Ages, always portrayed with the spiked wheel on which she was to have been broken, but which itself was broken by a thunderbolt from heaven. According to her legend, she was a virgin of noble birth and exceptional intelligence who bested 50 philosophers in a debate ordered by the emperor. She was known as Catherine of the Wheel and the patron of spinsters. On her day in France, women have the right to ask men to marry.