Deities both great and small are generally thought to have birthdays because the vast majority of them were once human beings. CCT has transformed numerous figures originally Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian into more comfortable characters--members of everybody's family, in effect. Other deities remain in their more exalted original Daoist forms. The following are only a few of the literally hundreds of divine birthday dates.
Among the earliest in the year is the Jade Emperor, celebrated on the ninth of the first month. On the third day of the second month, CCT acknowledges Wen Chang Di Jun, the god of literature and learning. Guan Yin's birthday occurs on the nineteenth of the second month. Xuan Tian Shang Di, the Supreme Emperor of Dark Heaven, was born on the third of the third month and is celebrated in some four hundred Taiwanese temples. A quasi-Daoist deity called the Great Emperor Who Protects Life, Bao Sheng Da Di, is celebrated on the fifteenth of the third month. Ma Zu, often referred to as the Great Aunt or Grandma, has her celebration on the twenty-third of the third month. On the thirteenth day of month five the general-become-deity Guan Di gets his due. An otherwise-anonymous City God's day is the fifteenth of the sixth month. Devotees of CCT observe the birthdays of Cao Jun on the third day of the eighth month, and that of Tu Di Gong on the fifteenth. Also on the third of that month Daoists celebrate the birthday of Si Ming, the Director of Destiny, known in CCT as the Kitchen God or Hearth Deity.
From The Handy Religion Answer Book, Second Edition by Jack Rendard, Ph.D., (c) 2012 Visible Ink Press(R). Your Guide to the World's Major Faiths
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