中秋節正是稻子成熟的時候。在中秋節農民們會祭拜土地神，土地神的生日就是這一天。很可能在古老傳統上，中秋節即意味著秋天的到來。就一年中的季節而言，中秋節也被命名為“豐收節，”在這一天春天播種的莊稼得以收獲。從古代開始，人們就會在中秋節喝酒，跳舞，唱歌，來慶祝豐收。這個場景能在《詩經》（古代中國最早的詩歌總集）找到。

The Mid-Autumn day is the very moment of rice maturity. And at that day farmers will worship the local God of land, whose birthday is exactly on that day. Mid-Autumn day is possibly an old tradition of telling the coming of autumn. In terms of the seasons in a year, the Mid-Autumn day can be named as "Harvest Day", when the crops sowed in the spring can be reaped. Since ancient times, people would drink, dance, and sing on that day, celebrating the harvest. This scene can be found in the Books of Odes (the earliest collection of poems in ancient China).

根據早期描述，古代的君王有著祭月的傳統，但是這一天是在秋分，而不是中秋節。然而，每年秋分的日子都不同，在秋分不一定有圓月。因此，祭月被人們認可成中秋節上的一個習俗，中秋節就是月亮最圓的時候。

According to the previous descriptions, the ancient emperors had the tradition of worshiping the moon, yet the day was initially on the day of Autumn Equinox, and not on the Mid-Autumn day. However, the Autumn Equinox is not a fixed day and there may or may not be a full moon on that day. Therefore, the day for worshipping the moon was accepted as a convention on the Mid-Autumn day, when the moon is in its fullest.

同時，據科學研究證明，在秋天地球和太陽的傾斜角會加大，所以天空上空的涼爽空氣會逐漸消失，而西北風仍然很弱。這樣的話，濕氣除掉了，天空中的空氣也變得純凈，月亮看起來更大更圓。這會是賞月的最好時間。

Meanwhile, it's proven by scientific research that the inclination of the earth and the sun will gradually increase in autumn, thus the cool air up in the sky will fade away while the northwest wind is still very weak. In this way, the moisture is removed and the air in the sky would become pure and clean. So the moon would appear to be relatively fuller and bigger. And this would be the best time to appreciate the beauty of the moon.