Chinese folk religion is woven through the traditional festival calendar, so that the turning of the seasons is experienced as a rhythm of honoring deities, ancestors, and spirits. The Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, stands at the center of this cycle: families reunite, household gods and ancestors are venerated, and rituals are performed to invite good fortune for the coming year. Offerings, incense, and attention to the domestic altar express the sense that the visible and invisible members of the family enter the new year together. The Lantern Festival at the end of the New Year period extends this atmosphere into public space, with temple fairs, processions, and offerings to local deities.

Several festivals focus explicitly on the relationship between the living and the dead. During the Qingming Festival, families visit graves, clean tombs, and present incense, food, and paper offerings, reaffirming the ongoing bond with their ancestors. The Ghost Festival, by contrast, turns attention to wandering or neglected spirits: offerings of food, incense, and paper money are made to “hungry ghosts,” and communal rituals may be held to pacify them and protect the living. The Double Ninth Festival also carries an ancestral and protective dimension, with visits to graves in some regions and practices aimed at warding off misfortune, often linked to respect for elders.

Other festivals reveal how Chinese folk religion sacralizes nature, time, and the body. The Dragon Boat Festival, while popularly associated with the poet Qu Yuan, retains strong exorcistic and protective elements: hanging mugwort and calamus, wearing charms, and in some areas making offerings to river or local spirits to drive away disease and harmful influences. The Mid-Autumn Festival centers on moon worship and the harvest; families gather, offer incense and food, and in some traditions direct devotion toward the moon goddess and local earth gods, as well as ancestors. These observances suggest that celestial cycles and agricultural rhythms are understood as occasions for renewed alignment with the spirit world.

Alongside these widely observed dates, there is a rich tapestry of deity-specific and household-centered celebrations. The Kitchen God Festival, held shortly before the New Year, sends the household deity to report to Heaven, with offerings—often sweet foods—intended to secure a favorable account of the family. In many regions, the birthdays or feast days of major gods such as Mazu, Guandi, the City God, or Tudigong are marked by temple fairs, processions of deity images, spirit-medium rituals, and communal feasts. Local temple festivals and agricultural celebrations likewise honor patron deities and mark planting or harvest times. Taken together, these festivals form a living calendar in which everyday life, family continuity, and the wider cosmos are ritually bound into a single, sacred order.