St. Joseph Honors the Ghost Festival Tradition this Week.
While we at EcoJoe love to share interesting traditions from the Catholic religion, we also enjoy sharing traditions from other faiths.
This week, from July 13 to 15, Buddhists in Japan will celebrate Ullambana O-bon, the Japanese version of the widely celebrated Ghost Festival. In Chinese tradition, the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day and the seventh month in general is regarded as the Ghost Month (鬼月), in which ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the lower realm.
Both Buddhists and Taoists claim that the Ghost Festival originated with their religion but its roots are probably in Chinese folk religion.
During this festival, families pay respect to their deceased ancestors with visits and gifts at their burial sites. This is very similar to the tradition celebrated by Catholics in Mexico, Dia de Los Muertos.
Photo by Mimi_KFamily members offer prayers to their deceased relatives, offer food and drink and burn joss paper. Such paper items are only valid in the underworld, which is why they burn it as an offering to the ghosts of their relatives. The afterlife is very similar in some aspects to the material world. The tradition says that the paper versions of material goods will provide comfort to their relatives in the afterlife. People will also burn other things such as paper houses, cars, servants and televisions to please the ghosts.
Burying a St. Joseph statue in the ground doesn’t seem so strange after all, now does it?
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