Mooncake! The Outside Tastes Like Moon and the Inside Tastes Like Autumn!

It's that time of year again: Moon Festival. I can't seem to get the whole story on Moon Festival. I don't know why it's a holiday; that is to say, I don't understand why the story of a girl traveling to the moon with her pet rabbit is an occasion to be celebrated. All I know is that it is celebrated, there's food, mooncake and jollification involved, and there's moon involved.

Last night, to celebrate, the teachers had a barbecue after school, slow-cooking all kinds of fare: shrimp, squid, fish, rice sausages, veggie kabobs, cornonnacob, things I can describe but wouldn't sound delicious even though they were. We gathered around three small, squat grills for a good three hours, a little longer, perhaps, than my attention span for such an "event", but we get used to these things. The moon, almost white and almost full, glided along its slow arc against the starless, purple sky.

Keeping with the theme of late, it occurs to me that a child might have similar early rememberances of Moon Festival, or any holiday for that matter: not sure of the occasion's significance, fragmentary but personally poignant--even magical--memories assume priority in the holiday schema. Perhaps as grown-ups, the sky won't seem as purple nor the fellowship as simple. Notwithstanding a basic ignorance for the holiday's legitimate reason, however, the concept of Moon Festival is about as concrete as it's going to get: there's food, mooncake and jollification involved, and there's moon involved.