Ullambana (Ghost Festival) · Yulanpen

Culture of origin: Buddhist · Cultural

Holiday sources: Buddhism

The Ghost Festival, Yulanpen in Chinese, falls on the fifteenth night of the seventh lunar month (the fourteenth in parts of southern China), in the month when, by popular belief, the gates of hell open and ghosts roam the earth. Its Buddhist origin is the Ullambana Sutra: Maudgalyayana found his dead mother reborn as a hungry ghost and gave her a bowl of rice, which turned to burning coal, and the Buddha taught him that offerings to the monks at the end of their rains retreat could help parents living and dead through seven lives. Families prepare meals, often vegetarian, for their ancestors and the dead, with empty seats left for them, burn paper clothing and money, and float lanterns and paper boats on the water to guide lost spirits. In Vietnam the day is Vu Lan, the Vietnamese form of Ullambana; Japan's Obon comes from the same story.