Dragon Boat Festival!

This week in China and other countries in Asia, Viet Nam and another one but I forget which, people will be celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival. I've been chatting with different friends on QQ and they've explained much of the history that is attached to this special day in Chinese history. 

If you are a student of Chinese history, you will know all about Qu Yuan and his life and poetry and, ultimately, his death by his own hand. It seems he carried a heavy rock into a river and drowned. People raced out in boats to save him, dropping rice into the water to keep the fish way. Later on Qu Yuan came back in a dream, asking his friends to wrap rice in three cornered silk packages to keep away the dragon. These days the rice is wrapped in leaves and the dragon boat races are held in many cities. Toronto has a Dragon Boat Festival too. Canada has over 3 million Chinese as part of our population.

I'm not sure but it seems to me that this festival is about the oldest annual festival there is in the world. It dates back to about 400 years BCE and, strangely enough, is not related to religion. Most of our festivals relate to something about god or Christ but this Chinese one is nicely different. 

What about the festivals where you live? Are there any that aren't related to religion? Are there any that are as old as this Chinese festival? The Dragon Boat Festival is about 2300 years old, can you beat that? Chinese culture was very advanced, even at that early date.  Most of the world was living in mud huts back then and I would find it unusual if there is an older festival in the world. Let me know, OK?

Thanks for reading.