Eight Days Before Mid-Autumn: The Rules of Moon Worship, and That Old Line “Men Don’t Worship the Moon”

The box of mooncakes has been in the kitchen for three days and my mother still has not opened it. She says she is waiting for the moon.

Mid-Autumn in 2026 falls on 25 September (the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month); under the General Office of the State Council’s notice on the 2026 public holiday arrangements, 25 September (Friday) to 27 September (Sunday) are days off, three in all (per China Daily’s round-up of 13 September). Over these eight days the household moves into gear by degrees: buy pomelos, buy taro, wipe the incense table clean.

The offerings for moon worship follow rules of their own. Mooncakes and fruit are the main offerings to the moon, and the more particular places make a large “reunion cake” for the occasion — the Gazetteer of Datong County (Da Tong Xian Zhi) of the tenth year of the Guangxu reign records that locally “the cake offered to the moon is as much as two or three chi across and is called the reunion cake”, and once it has been offered, the whole family must share it (per Zhang Bo’s article in Guangming Daily, 25 September 2018, which also quotes the Ming-era More Records of a Tour of West Lake (Xi Hu You Lan Zhi Yu): “the fifteenth day of the eighth month is called Mid-Autumn, and among the people mooncakes are given to one another, taking the meaning of reunion”). Seasonal fruits each carry a lucky pun: pomegranate for “many sons”, persimmon for “everything as you wish”, peanuts, also called longevity nuts, and dates and chestnuts for “a son early on”. These are auspicious sayings handed down in different places and they are not consistent. China’s Taiwan region also has the practice of worshipping the “moon mother”, with pomelo, watermelon and mooncakes usually laid on the incense table.

As for timing, in most places the worship begins around the time the moon reaches its height, and the fruit is shared out among the family afterwards.

As for who does not take part — the saying most often quoted is “men do not worship the moon, women do not sacrifice to the stove”. It has a definite source: Fu Cha Dun Chong, writing in the Qing-dynasty Record of the Seasons of Yanjing (Yan Jing Sui Shi Ji), notes that “when the moon is offered to, men mostly do not bow in worship; hence the saying in the capital, men do not worship the moon, women do not sacrifice to the stove”. In other words, it began as a proverb recording the actual state of things in and around Beijing, not as some esoteric rule; practice differs widely from place to place, and all the more so today.

If there is an offering table to be laid out in your home too, you will find the rules quite practical: they settle who is responsible for what, what time to begin, and how the offerings are shared out afterwards. One of the most common questions on 占卜迷指 is “should I really keep all these household observances?” Describe the specific trouble clearly and it will recommend a suitable method, cast the chart, interpret it and export it, so that you can tell apart what is tradition and what is only nerves.

Sources

• Guangming Daily (Zhang Bo, 25 September 2018: the record of the reunion cake and the offerings to the moon): https://epaper.gmw.cn/gmrb/html/2018-09/25/nw.D110000gmrb_20180925_1-04.htm
• Fu Cha Dun Chong, Record of the Seasons of Yanjing (Yan Jing Sui Shi Ji), Qing dynasty — the passage on men not bowing when the moon is offered to, classical text at Wikisource: https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hans/%E7%87%95%E4%BA%AC%E6%AD%B2%E6%99%82%E8%A8%98
• China Daily (13 September 2026: the three-day Mid-Autumn break from 25 to 27 September, citing the General Office of the State Council’s notice): https://cn.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202609/13/WS6aa62d87e4b09a165c789a7c.html

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