There’s a tradition in China and other Asian countries to celebrate something called The Mid-Autumn Festival.  It’s a time to spend with family, chat, visit.  There are many celebrations that go on during this time.  We have celebrated the Harvest Moon ever since our daughter joined our family.  We aren’t Chinese so we don’t do things, I’m sure, like a Chinese family would but we try to celebrate things that she might have grown up with, had she stayed living in China.

Our family tradition involves going to a Chinese restaurant or buying Chinese food, enjoying dinner with each other and then going outside to sit under the moonlight and enjoy the Harvest Moon.  We buy moon cakes and drink green tea and my husband reads the story of Chang e and Hou Yi.  You can read that story here:  http://www.shenyunperformingarts.org/learn/article/read/item/fX4pKuyhEqw/the-goddess-of-the-moon-change-and-hou-yi.html

 

We celebrated the Harvest Moon this year, one day late.  It was actually on Monday, September 24th,  but Monday was not a good day for me for many reasons.  We moved our celebration to Tuesday and sat under the moon light, drank green tea and shared a moon cake.  Buying moon cakes this year was an adventure in itself! We need to remember to buy them early next year!  We  are a music loving family so we decided to listen to songs about the moon.  You might be amazed how many different songs reference the moon.

We enjoyed listening to:

Moon River -Andy Williams

Bad Moon Rising-CCR

Fly Me to the Moon-Frank Sinatra

Heavenly-Harry Connic Jr

That’s Amore-Dean Martin

and lastly my favorite of the evening and appropriately named…

Harvest Moon – Neil Young

My husband can be quite the romantic at times and so when he offered to dance with me in our front yard under the moonlight to this song…of course, I accepted.

While we danced, our daughter played with our kitten and it was one of those moments in life that are just beautiful and you know you will hold in your heart  forever.  These moments that don’t cost money, don’t cross off a bucket list item, aren’t extraordinary in anyway, except that they are…

So today…I’m grateful to our Father in heaven for The Harvest Moon, Dancing, Memories, Moon Cakes, Green Tea, My Husband and the daughter that brought this celebration to our lives…

I Give Thanks!

KOR

P.S.  If you know a song about the moon that we missed please leave it for us in the comments…

Here’s a pic of our moon cakes!