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The Chinese New Year
Celebrations
January
29 , 2006
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Chinese version>>
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China, like all countries
with a long history and civilization, is very much
steeped in tradition and emotions. The Chinese New
Year is a time when this is most evident and colourful.
There are many districts in China, and each has its
own customs. However, some common customs are practiced
in general by most people at home nowadays.
The celebration rites of the New Year
start even before the actual day of the New Year.
7 days before New Year’s day, it is time to
thank the “God of the Kitchen Stove” for
having smiled on your household for the past year.
He is feasted and sent back to Heaven to give a good
report on you. This way, your kitchen would be assured
of plenty for the year to come. Auspicious greetings
are often pasted on doorways and prominent places
in the house. The more popular ones are:
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- Safety in and out of the house (doorways)
- Healthy and robust as a dragon or horse
(health)
- Have a prosperous New Year (financial)
- Progress in your studies (students)
- Plenty of financial gain (business)
- Fortune (put upside down to show the
arrival of “Fortune” because of homonymic
inference)
On New Year’s Eve, it is time for the
family to gather together for a thanksgiving dinner. This
symbolizes the harmony inside the family, as well as a note
of thanks for a year well-spent. The family has always been
the most important basic unit in society since the time
of Confucius who maintained that there can be no harmony
in the country without harmony inside the family first.
After the dinner, the family will talk and enjoy themselves
until around midnight, when they will have some dessert
together before retiring to bed. Children will be given
some “lucky money” that they put under the pillows
or in pyjama pockets so that they will wake up to a rich
year!
On New Year’s day, people visit each
other with congratulatory messages of good health and prosperity.
Children who visit their elders are given red packets of
“lucky money” and no work is done at all this
day. The host or hostess will offer the guests a tray of
sweets and preserves, signifying that all will be sweet
and smooth for the New Year.
On the second day, it is the official time
to begin the year. The house is cleaned up of yesterday’s
refuse, the ancestors are paid respects at the family altar,
and every family will begin the day with a good meal. After
that, married daughters will return to their maternal homes
to visit their parents, something which is not allowed on
the first day. Usually they will stay for dinner, and their
husbands will bring presents for their parents-in-law to
show that their daughters have married well.
After two days of constant activities, people
need a day of rest. So on the 3rd day of the New Year, they
stay home. It has been a superstition that visits with each
other will end up in quarrels and the breaking of friendship.
Or, you will meet with an accident on your route of visits.
The 4th day is another big day for rites
and activities. This is the day when the gods return to
earth after their vacations in heaven. Again the house has
to be cleaned and the altars of the gods freshened up to
await their arrivals. The floors have to be swept with an
inward motion, or you will be sweeping out your “wealth”
at the same time. A scrumptious feast has to be prepared,
including meats, fruits, and vegetables, and of course rice.
They have to be well-fed and kept happy or they will turn
their anger on the household. After they are satisfied,
the mortals will devour what is “leftover”.
What is fit for the gods and blessed by them will carry
blessings to the mortals as well. Now, people are ready
to face the day to day operations of life again.
On the 5th day, business will usually re-open
after four days of rest. And where business is concerned,
the “God of Wealth” reigns high. This day is
therefore specially dedicated to him. He is welcomed by
a feast, firecrackers, and sometimes even a lion dance.
Paper money is burned for his use, and he is supposed to
repay your piety by bringing an increase of wealth to your
business institution.
The 7th day of the New Year is known as “Everybody’s
Birthday”. The origin of this is rather obscure, with
some saying that it is just a chance for a big meal after
the lull of the 6th day.
After the 7th day, things tend to calm down
for a while though it is still fashionable to visit each
other. “Lucky money” packets are still given
out to children during this period. New Year celebrations
do not officially end until after the 15th day, the day
after the first full moon of the new year. In the old days,
this day was celebrated with as much colour and gaiety as
New Year’s Day itself, often highlighted with a “Lantern
Festival”.
The 15th day was also known as a perfect
setting for lovers’ meetings in old Chinese society
where the sexes were segregated and it was unbecoming of
proper conduct to go on dates. But on this day, young people,
both male and female, gathered in the marketplace to enjoy
the sights of beautiful lanterns and lights, and to try
to guess the riddles hidden therein. To flaunt their knowledge,
scholars would try to solve the riddles and offer their
prizes to the ladies of their choice. Acceptance could mean
the beginning of a beautiful relationship, but could also
mean a lot of heartache in a society where marriages were
arranged by parents and marriage-brokers. Some might not
even meet their spouses until the wedding night! Many a
Chinese legendary love-story had been known to take place
in the setting of the “Lantern Festival”.
Nowadays, we are much more direct.
There are still some semblances of the Lantern Festival
in shopping malls, but riddles are now solved not for romance
but for the monetary values or prizes they carry. However,
traditional lore cannot be forgotten that easily. Many youngsters
still visit the temples on the 15th day as others had done
hundreds of years ago. It has been reported that unmarried
people who made a sincere wish at the temples would be married
within the year. Barren housewives would become mothers
or become pregnant during the year if the reports could
be relied on, while parents with many daughters would have
a son fina
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