「蜡祭」一詞可見於《禮記》。《禮記‧郊特牲》說到：「伊耆氏始為蜡，蜡也者，索也。歲十二月，合聚萬物而索饗之也。」又「蜡之祭也：主先嗇，而祭司嗇也。祭百種以報嗇也。」周代「蜡祭」於每年年終時舉行，祭祀的對象十分廣泛，先嗇、禽獸、貓虎、坊、水庸、昆蟲等凡與農事相關的事物，皆在祭祀之列，為周代十分重要的農業祭祀。十三經中並無明確有以「臘」為祭名的禮制，「臘」有釋為獵也，是狩獵祭祀時所供奉肉類獵物的活動，或貢獻肉類祭品的祭祀行為為「臘」，其資料可見《禮記‧月令》：「臘先祖五祀」。「臘」一詞在周制中就目前可見是與宗廟祭祀相關，不見其與農業祭祀的關聯。本文對於「蜡祭」的考析首先以十三經中「蜡」、「臘」兩字使用情形初步對二字在祭祀活動中的情況定義，佐以先秦以後各代史書中記載之歲末「蜡祭」，查找可能混用的時期及原因，是以理解「蜡」、「臘」二祭用法。

The term, “Memorial Ceremony of Zha”, can be found in the Classic of Rites. “Rural Special Offering, Classic of Rites” states that “Zha originates from Ichi Family; Zha, Hunt, in December of every year, while all things gather up to ask for food”; in addition, “Zha, our ancestor who taught us planting, and worshiped planting. We worshiped hundreds of foods to memorize our ancestor.” The “memorial ceremony of Zha” in Zhou Dynasty was held at the end of the year and the subject was varied, including farming-related things like ancestor, animals, cats, tigers, workshops, Shui yong and insects, are contained, which is the ritual of Zhou Dynasty. In Thirteen Classics, there was none of ritual system titled with “December Festival”; “December” may be an act to worship meat of prey or “worship” to the ancestors with meat means “December”; please refer to “Climate and Phenology in a lunar month of the Classic of Rites”: “Five Gods are in Priority of Worship”. In short, the term, “December”, is associated with the memorial ceremony in the system of Zhou Dynasty; however, we may not be sure if “December” a title of the worship. In Thirteen Classics, “Zha” and “December” were applied in distinctive form of worship, which we may know that they are not allowed to be mixed up before pre-Qin Dynasty; however, both of them are mixed up in some books, even are recognized as the same word. We used data pertaining to worship in each generation of historical books to have a discriminated description of both, which thereby became the base of applications.