Lunar New Year: What's It All About?

Lunar New Year started early this year, on January 22 on the solar calendar, marking the Year of the Rabbit.

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For the record, I was born in the year of the rabbit many cycles ago. (Pro-tip: If you know someone’s animal, you can easily figure out how old they are because one cycle runs twelve years, so it’s your year when you’re twelve, twenty-four, and so on.) People ask me what the characteristics of the rabbit are, and I tell them what I know from placemats in Chinese restaurants: brilliant and sensitive. There are some negative traits, too, but I can’t remember those. Since I don’t believe in any kind of astrology, I don’t care one way or another.

Lunar New Year is celebrated by billions of people around the Asian diaspora, not just with a single-day holiday but two solid weeks of revelry. Asian folks will travel hundreds of miles to gather with their families, arms laden with gifts of money and new clothes, where preparations involve weeks of work. It seems like it’s based on a lot of superstition stitched together with a lot of eating.

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For example, here are just a few beliefs: Don’t wash your hair during the two-week celebration because it means washing your luck away. The house must be cleaned and swept (banishing the bad luck out the door), and all sharp objects stowed away.

Homes should be filled with flowers and oranges and decorated with red banners with sayings that invite good luck. Lots of noodles and other like-shaped foods (jellyfish, certain mushrooms) must be consumed because they signify longevity.

Fierce lion dances accompanied by loud, thumping drums and ear-splitting firecrackers are set off at one’s doorstep to scare away evil spirits. Lucky money–cash in red envelopes with blessings–is given to children to bring luck and prosperity.

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Wearing red to attract luck and visits to extended family dressed in my finest new clothes to share good wishes are just a few things I remember from my childhood in Hong Kong, now faded in my memory and, most of all, diluted in a new, too-hectic life in America, raising a family in a microwave culture that does not have room for such rituals.

Over the years, as I frantically clean the house before the first day of the year, I wonder: why should I continue practicing these traditions when they are based on centuries-old superstitions which only seem to add stress to an already stressful life?

One of my favorite childhood memories is sitting at our small kitchen table wrapping wonton with my mother and grandmother. We would take a wonton skin and hold it flat in one palm, dab some raw egg on one corner, put the meat and shrimp filling in, and, with a skillful twist, fold one end to the other where the egg paste would glue them together.

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I imagine my mother might have done that with her grandmother and my grandmother with hers. When I sweep away evil spirits from my doorstep and give red envelopes to my sons, I’m doing something my ancestors did for hundreds of years, wishing for a better tomorrow. Rituals may not make rational sense, but they place us not only in a vast community that shares them but also connects us to our past. We are a vital piece of the whole. We belong. Rituals and traditions make space for us to recognize that in an often fragmented and fractured world and provide meaning to our lives.

At the same time, we need to recognize that traditions are alive and always evolving as our lives adapt to a new culture. Can I really clean the whole house, fill it with flowers and oranges, and visit all my relatives when I have two jobs, two kids, and a dog? Can my kids wrap dozens of wonton with me when they have tennis, rowing, and AP classes?

In many Asian countries that celebrate Lunar New Year, it is customary to take two full weeks off to do all that! Here in America, the non-Asian Chair of my department once called me out for missing a faculty meeting on the first day of the new year, ignorant of the supreme significance of that day. Such as it is.

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So, as many traditions seem to be slipping away for new generations of Asian Americans, we may need to adapt. My family puts up a few decorations; we have a sumptuous meal together with friends and loved ones; I wear the red sweater my grandmother knitted for me, and I call my relatives to wish them the best. These rituals are vital and alive. They buoy us and bind us across generations as one.

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I wish you great joy and prosperity in this Year of the Water Rabbit.