10/02/2024
Happy Lunar New Year!!!
This is also a new year beginning in the traditional Chinese calendar; which is a farmer’s calendar.
- there are components from the solar calendar where the 4 seasons are further divided into 6 solar terms each (so total of 24 terms per year). So we can account for the changes within each season.
- and there is a flow of the year follows the lunar cycle, accounting for the waxing and waning rhythm.
Although we recognise the “establish of Spring” on 4th of Feb and Spring equinox on the 20th of March this year; we are starting the new year today. As today is also the new moon season. (So for those of you who don’t follow the Chinese custom, you can use the period to consider what intention to have for this month or year to come)
Now, Chinese new year is a few weeks’ affair, staring with a big clear out day on the 28th of last year. This is the time when the whole family come together to clean house, get personal affairs into order (eg. haircuts), as well as batch cook! This is because the custom dictate that during the Chinese new year period:
- there should be no sweeping of the floor (as you are sweeping the luck away from the house)
- No haircut (hair in Chinese sounds like prosperity, so you wouldn’t want to cut that) or buying new shoes or books (both sound like losing in Chinese)
- and no live fire during the new year period (most likely due to fire safety back in the days)
Then New Year’s Eve is about gathering of the family, where everyone joins in to celebrate, have food (including dishes like dumplings, rice balls, spring rolls to signify for the coming of spring as well as enveloping of the whole family). Red is the official colour of new year, where we wear red coloured clothes, put red paper with writings of greetings and wishes around the house, as well as giving red envelope to each other. This is because of mythic monster that used to come and harm villagers every year around this time, and red colour is its nemesis. So red is used to warn off evil, as well as used in celebration (like red fire works)