Lunar New Year

Lunar New Year

Lunar New Year was this past Tuesday, February 5th, which marks the first day of the Lunar calendar year. The Lunar calendar celebrates each moon cycle and the 5th starts off with a New Moon. Each moon cycle is 15 days with each Lunar month having two complete moon cycles.

This calendar is widely used throughout various Asian cultures including China, Vietnam, Tibet, Korea, and more, but how it’s celebrated can vary. Although there are shared characteristics, Tibet’s calendar varies slightly from the typical Lunar calendar because of its influence with the Mongolian calendar and culture.

Shared Customs and Traditions

Though each country differs in their culture, values, traditions, and food, there are similarities in how the new year is celebrated.

1. Family
   1. The first day of the New Year is typically reserved for families. Families would spend time with each other and sharing meals. Stores and even entire streets would close for the Lunar New Year celebrations so employees can spend time with their family during this season.
2. Cleaning
   1. Everything must be cleaned prior to the new year. There is a superstition that states that everything must be cleaned to ward away any of the bad from the previous year. However, once the new year hits, there cannot be any cleaning involved or else you might sweep away the good luck and fortune for the upcoming year.
3. New clothes
   1. An old folklore states that demons from the previous year will look for you and bring bad luck and fortune. Wearing new clothes to welcome in the new year will confuse them into thinking they have the wrong person and you will remain safe.
4. Resolve old conflicts
   1. It’s tradition to resolve any old conflicts that have been plaguing you before the new year because you don’t want to bring that bad luck with you. This includes paying off old debts.
5. Food superstitions and puns
   1. Many traditions and celebrations are based on myths, folklore, and stories passed down from generation to generation. There are even traditions that are passed down simply because of the way certain words will sound like another object.

Puns All the Way

Many cultures often eat specific fruits or foods to bring in the good luck for the new year. The food chosen generally carry a double meaning as well.

In Vietnamese, many members wish each other: cầu vừa đủ xài, which translates to “pray that you have enough for the year.” As such, family would exchange the four fruits that sounds like the words said in the greeting: soursop, logan, papaya, and mango.

Chinese community members greet the new year with dishes that include fish (yu) because fish sounds like “surplus” or “extra.”

And it not only extends to food, but also to specific numbers as well.

In Chinese and Vietnamese culture, elders would often give red envelopes (Mandarin: hóng bāo, Vietnamese: bao lì xì) filled with money for their younger family members. With the recent rise of online money exchanging services, elders can be very specific about the money they’re giving, sending over $8.88 in the Chinese RMB. Translated, $8.88 is “bā bā bā”, which sounds like “prosper, prosper, prosper.”

Community Voices

Losar, the Tibetan three-day festival celebrating the new year, holds very similar traditions as well. Like with Tết and Lunar New Year, the first day of celebrations is typically with family. The second and third days extend to meet with friends and more distant relatives.

Tenzin Kunsal, Regional Tibetan Youth Congress (RTYC) President, says, “Tibetans visit monasteries, make offerings and decorate Buddha’s altar, cook special dishes, sing and dance to celebrate the new year.”

This year, RTYC organized the largest Losar Gorshey starting from 5PM and scheduled to end at 1AM. Gorshey is a performing arts tradition that involves a communal circle dance that invites all to join.

For AAOP’s Community Organizer, Long, Tết, the Vietnamese Spring Festival, is a “time that all family members gather. Even though they live really far away, [we all] try [our] very best to go home. It’s a time that we remember and appreciate our ancestor together. It’s also the time that we wish the best luck for each other.”

“New year is considered as a new page in our life, where we believe that we can achieve what we want to do and forget the disappointments in the past.”