Essential Fruits for the Moon Festival Fruit Platter

What’s in the Mid-Autumn Festival fruit tray?

The Mid-Autumn Festival takes place on the 15th of August every year in the lunar calendar. Besides the mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn festival, the fruit tray is also indispensable.

The Mid-Autumn Festival fruit tray consists of 5 main fruits of the autumn season, with diverse colors and meaningful wishes for luck, peace, prosperity, etc.

This fruit tray symbolizes the 5 elements: Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth.

The 5 common fruits used to decorate the Mid-Autumn Festival fruit tray are bananas, pomelos, persimmons, pomegranates, and custard apples. The fruit tray includes green fruits representing positive energy and ripe fruits representing negative energy, reflecting the balance of yin and yang in the universe.

Ripe bananas emit a fragrant scent, red pomegranates bring hope, custard apples with numerous seeds symbolize the wish for growth and prosperity, pomelos represent coolness and beauty, and pomegranates are sweet and lucky.

Currently, many people also add other types of fruits to the fruit tray to make it more lively, depending on the region.

Specifically, in the northern region, the fruit tray usually consists of bananas, pomelos, peaches, persimmons, and kumquats. The bananas are placed in the middle, and then the remaining fruits are placed on top, with the possibility of replacing pomelos with Buddha’s hand fruit.

In the central region, the Mid-Autumn Festival fruit tray is simpler, including papayas, mangoes, custard apples, litchis, and bananas…

In the southern region, the fruit tray is meticulously prepared, including various fruits with complete meanings, abundance, such as papayas, custard apples, coconuts, mangoes, litchis…

How to beautifully arrange the Mid-Autumn Festival fruit tray

In general, arranging the Mid-Autumn Festival fruit tray is quite simple, depending on each region and the requirements of each family, the level of sophistication may vary.

Some families often shape the fruits into cute figures, such as a rabbit made from a pomelo, or a fish made from a dragon fruit…

Usually, for people in the northern region, the simplest way to arrange the Mid-Autumn Festival fruit tray is to place fresh bananas at the bottom as a base, then place a round pomelo with its stem and leaves on top.

Next, we will arrange peaches, persimmons, and tangerines in the remaining spaces, so that the fruits are neatly placed on the plate. We can also alternate with fresh red chili peppers in the gaps between bananas to have the three colors – yellow, red, and green.

For people in the southern region, the traditional way to beautifully arrange the Mid-Autumn Festival fruit tray is to choose large fruits such as papayas, custard apples, coconuts, and place them on the tray first to create a pedestal. Then, we arrange the smaller fruits on top and arrange them properly to resemble a tower. The pair of watermelons is used to place on the sides after the fruit tray is completed.

However, nowadays many families have reduced the use of watermelons and arrange various fruits on a single plate to save space on the altar.

The way to beautifully arrange the Mid-Autumn Festival fruit tray in the central region is also simple, with large and heavy fruits placed at the bottom as a base, and then the smaller fruits are placed on top or alternately in the empty spaces.

Vinh Nhi (compiled)