The Chinese New Year celebration ended for us last night with a big Chinese dinner and a lantern parade around a friend's circular driveway. It was a lot of fun. If I would have researched better, we would have eaten gluttonous rice balls (yuanxiao) and we would not have used the same lanterns as we used for Mid-Autumn Festival. Apparently the lanterns are red and oval for mid-autumn festival, but the lanterns are all different colors and in various shapes for the New Year Lantern Festival.
I never knew that different foods were eaten on different day. For instance, we should have eaten raw fish salad on the seventh day. Everybody (including dogs and the Jade Emperor) has a birthday during Chinese New Year. I did know that everybody had a birthday during the new year, but I didn't know that the birthdays were celebrated on different days during the 15-day celebration.
I have been putting one dollar per year of my children's age in red envelopes every year. Sheesh! I should have known better. Odd numbers of money are given only for funerals (30 and 50 are considered odd because the first digit is odd). My unlucky children received red envelopes this year with $7 and $9 inside. I have just given them a curse for bad luck for the remainder of the year. Oh dear! I should always just give them $8 because 8 is lucky. Silly me!
Here is information from Wikipedia that I'm including so I can remember to refer to it next year. I'm going to try to celebrate each day of the festival next year. Next year will be the year of the dragon and will begin on January 23rd.
Information about Lantern Festival
Information about Lantern Festival
1 comments:
I'm so sad we missed it! But glad we didn't give you the kids virus! We spent the entire morning in the waiting room, only to find out that whatever this cold has started as, has ended up giving my kids three ear infections, a sinus infection, and some gnarly fevers. Your party looks beautiful! And I definitely think you should make the rule of only giving your kids $8 every year. They can't argue with money and luck.
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