On the day before the festival, my grandmother puts a small bowl of rice and a peach on the table by the window. Nobody in the family eats it. (11) She says it is for those who are far from home, somewhere out in the wide universe, and cannot come back. When I was a kid I thought this was simply a waste, (12) I never said so aloud. Last year my uncle could not fly home from abroad. My grandmother set the bowl as always, and my mother cried at the table. (13) I understood that the empty seat was the point. The custom does not feed anybody, (14) it keeps a door open for a year.
Every year, just before the end of the holiday, somebody says that a festival has lost its meaning. The food is bought, not made; the words are said without thought. (15) A custom does not work because everyone believes in it. It works because it puts the same people in the same room on the same day. A family that never plans to meet will not meet, (16) a family with one fixed date each year will. (17), the old words matter less than the date they carry. This may sound cold, (18) it is why a tradition can live on after the belief that started it is gone.