Chapter Ten: The La Month and the La Sacrifice — The Great Year-End Sacrifice, Repaying Origins, and the Source of the Laba Festival

I. Why Is the Twelfth Month Called "La Month"$9

The agricultural twelfth month, in which Lesser Cold falls, has a universally known alternative name — "La Month" (layue). Why is the twelfth month called "La Month"$10 The character "la" (腊) conceals the most important ritual content of the Lesser Cold season.

The original meaning of "la" is closely tied to the year-end sacrifice. In pre-Qin and Han dynasty texts, "la" refers to the grand sacrifice held at year's end, a combined offering to all the gods and spirits. The Eastern Han scholar Ying Shao's Comprehensive Meaning of Popular Customs offers a classic explanation: "'La' means 'to hunt' (lie)" — "la" is interchangeable with "hunt," referring to hunting game to offer in sacrifice to ancestors and the hundred spirits. It also says: "'La' means 'to connect' (jie)" — "la" derives from "the juncture of old and new," as year's end is the transition between the old year and the new.

Whether "hunt" (obtaining sacrificial animals through the hunt) or "connect" (the sacrifice marking the old-new juncture), the core of "la" is that grand, combined sacrifice to all spirits held at year's end. Because this most important sacrifice was held in the twelfth month, the twelfth month came to be called "La Month."

II. Repaying Origins and Returning to Beginnings: The Core Spirit of the La Sacrifice

The Book of Rites (Liji, "Suburban Sacrifice") offers an extraordinarily profound discussion of the year-end "Zha" sacrifice (closely related to the La sacrifice; in the pre-Qin era they may have been used together or distinguished — Zha as the combined sacrifice to the spirits of all things, La as the sacrifice to ancestors — later gradually merging into one): "The Zha sacrifice primarily honors the First Planter and also sacrifices to the Master of Planting, offering to the hundred crops in repayment for the harvest."

The key word here is "repayment" (bao) — repaying, giving thanks.

The Book of Rites further says: "Zha means 'seeking out'; in the twelfth month of the year, all things are gathered together and sought out for offerings." This sacrifice encompassed every spirit related to the year's agriculture and daily life — the God of Agriculture, the God of Grain, the God of Fields, the God of Water, the God of Dikes, the God of Insects, and even the Spirit of Cats and the Spirit of Tigers (honored because they prey upon the mice and boars that damage crops). Nothing was omitted; no spirit was left unacknowledged.

Why such thoroughness$11 Behind it lies the ancients' deeply solemn spirit of "repaying origins and returning to beginnings" (baoben fanshi).

What does "repaying origins and returning to beginnings" mean$12 The Book of Rites offers the most penetrating formulation: "All things originate in Heaven; humanity originates in its ancestors. ... Therefore the suburban sacrifice is the grand repayment of origins and return to beginnings."

"Repaying origins" means giving thanks to the "origin" (ben) — the root, the source — that gave us life and all we have. "Returning to beginnings" means going back, remembering the "beginning" (shi) — the starting point, the source — never forgetting where everything first came from.

III. Attending Carefully to Endings, Pursuing the Distant Past: The La Sacrifice and Ancestor Veneration

The La sacrifice honors not only the hundred spirits but, crucially, the ancestors. At year's end, the entire family gathers to sacrifice to and remember the ancestors — this is one of the La sacrifice's core contents.

"Pursuing the distant past" (zhui yuan) means remembering, reflecting upon ancestors long departed. The year-end La sacrifice is the most concentrated, most solemn moment for "pursuing the distant past." As the year draws to a close, descendants gather together, set out offerings, and commemorate the achievements and virtues of the ancestral line. This "pursuing the distant past" is not mere ceremony but a profound connection of life — it makes the living, at year's end, newly conscious that they are one link in an unbroken chain of life stretching from ancestors above to descendants below.

IV. The Source of Laba: The Eighth Day of the La Month and Warmth within Cold

Speaking of the La Month, one cannot omit "Laba" — the eighth day of the La Month and the bowl of "Laba congee" (laba zhou) that has warmed countless winters.

"Laba congee" — porridge made from multiple grains, beans, and dried fruits — has a spiritual core that runs in direct continuity with the ancient La sacrifice's spirit of "repaying origins" and "gathering all things together." Laba congee assembles the harvest of the entire year — rice, millet, sorghum, wheat, beans, and assorted dried fruits — into a single pot. Is this not precisely the dietary, everyday-life version of "gathering all things together" as described in the Book of Rites$13

At a deeper level, Laba congee also embodies the dialectic of Lesser Cold's "nurturing spring within cold" and "warmth within cold." In the coldest month of the year (around Lesser Cold), people cook a steaming pot of congee combining a hundred grains, and the whole family sits around it, sharing warmth — this bowl of congee brings not only physical warmth (warding off cold) but warmth of the heart (togetherness, gratitude, and hope for the year to come).

V. The Cosmological Meaning of the La Sacrifice: Reconstructing the Order of Heaven and Humanity at Year's End

At a still higher level, the year-end La sacrifice constitutes, for the ancients, a solemn review, repayment, and reconstruction of the entire "order of Heaven and humanity" at the year's close.

Review — looking back over the entire year, seeing how Heaven (wind, rain, cold, heat), Earth (crops and produce), the spirits (divine protection), the ancestors (continuation of bloodline), and humanity (a year's labor) have worked together in concert. Repayment — through the grand sacrifice, expressing gratitude for all this coordination and bestowal. Reconstruction — through this great ritual of repaying Heaven and humanity and gathering all things together, reaffirming and consolidating the cosmic order of "Heaven and humanity in harmony, each in its proper place," thereby laying a harmonious, well-ordered, divinely blessed foundation for the year to come.