Show CHINESE HAVE DAY OF THANKS the moon feast Is one of the most popular and widely spread of all uie chinese pagan festivals it has many at the characteristics of the ancient moon worship ceremonies of syria and phoenicia and it comes as near to being a thanksgiving festival as any heathen feast could ever expect to be celebrating the ingathering of the harvest to the masses of the chinese however there appears to be but a faint idea of genuine thanksgiving connected with this moon feast it Is simply imply the remnant of an ancient institution ution coming down from the re cotest antiquity as a mean meaningless Ingle let act of nature worship it Is possible that in the beginning among the early chinese people the moon festival may have been less pagan and more characterized by feelings of thankful rejoicing than it Is at present however that may be no wiser choice could have been made by the missionaries in china toward establishing a genuine national thanksgiving feast than the selection of the day of the popular moon feast the moon feast was first proclaimed a thanksgiving festival in 1900 at wu cann chang where the large church was filled with a well ordered crowd of chinese celebrating for the first time the newly appointed thanksgiving das da the sacred building was beautifully adorned with offerings of staple articles of chinese diet like beans rice millet and other grains not to speak break of pomegranates pears apples alne lne salt and flour muchang Is a great city of nearly a million inhabitants situated far up the yang tse klang kiang in the heart of china its central position among the teeming myriads of heathen chinese renders it a good point tor for the spread of helpful and uplifting ideas and truths and in view of the readiness of the chinese at home to adopt t the best things presented to them for their own good it Is expected that the old moon feast will be gradually adopted in its newly baptized form DS as the national thanksgiving day among the or of chinese at present under the influence of christianity and in this way also gradually become the national thanksgiving day among the votaries vot aries of buddhism confucianism and taoism in the course of their emancipation from the grosser features of these time honored religions |