I absolutely love Chinese New Year.
To me, Christmas (from a non-Christian POV) and New Year are times to celebrate with friends by having great dinner in some posh place and having a blast with each other by partying through the night.
Chinese New Year on the other hand is totally different. It is a traditional moment celebrated with family filled with long cultivated traditions and practices. CNY is all about being loud, bright and binging on food.
I often get from people saying how the CNY mood is lacking. I got this every year from different people. Maybe the problem is not in the mood surrounding those people, but lies within themselves. I believe that the anticipation for CNY is directly proportional (wee! physics term still usable) to the amount of preparation done for the celebration.
The CNY tradition is seeped deeply within my family. Every year we do almost the same thing, without fail. It's traditions like these that we kept doing yearly that made CNY exciting. My favourite part in all these has never been on the first day of CNY. On the contrary, they are the days leading to the new year. I love the preparation and anticipation for the moment rather than the moment itself.
Every year, on the last day of the year (Chinese calendar), I will accompany my mom to the market very early in the morning before the sun rises. This is to get parking and to be in the market before the crowd gets in. Mom will then get all the stuff that cannot be bought earlier, ingredients that cannot be kept for too long a time. I like how when it's so early in the morning, everything has a tinge of blue all over.
I love the crowd during CNY. You can find people everywhere from shopping for new clothes in malls to buying new year groceries in TESCO to getting all kinds of fresh food products in the market. I especially appreciate the atmosphere in the market with a blend of different kinds of people. There are vendors trying to sell all kinds of things from hair accessories to pots and pans, a final rush in capitalizing from the new year crowd. There are also market sellers, all swearing up and down that their prices are the cheapest. And of course, there are us consumers, all trying to find the best bargains, thrilled by all the price competitions going around.
CNY is all about being RED and LOUD! Everywhere you turn you'll see something red and shiny. Some might regard these as gaudy and old fashioned but I see it as tradition that forms the foundation of CNY. During this time, goodwill becomes something that you can buy. Buy an image of the God of Prosperity and stick it to the front door thus good luck will follow all year round. Buy something red to wear on the first day to start off the year on the right note. Buy mandarin oranges to symbolize a basket of wealth. To me, all these has nothing to do with superstitions. It's not something that I will have to strictly follow or otherwise I will have bad luck. These are simply things that I do because they are right. The new year is after all a clean slate and I will want to start it off in the best way possible. So what if it has to do with wearing red and not sweeping the floor on the first day?
Did I mention the food during CNY? My family has a tradition of baking our own cookies. Mom is actually famous among the relatives for her awesome-goodness butter cake. There are meat floss spring roll, cornflake cookies, peanut cookies, chocolate chip cookies, pineapple cookies and deep fried crab stick strips. All these we make. For those that we buy there are cartons and cartons of Shandy, beer, Coke, Chrysanthemum, F&N drinks, Pop, boxes and packets of chips, chocolates, sweets, peanuts, nuts. The best thing about all these is not that we can binge as much as we want, but that we get the same thing at every house we pay a visit to!
CNY is all about spreading goodness and goodwill. Kids are given blessings from adults to excel in studies and to grow up healthily while adults wish good health and longevity to their elders. There is the unending and incessant greetings of 'Gong Xi Fa Cai' left and right, all wishing everyone a prosperous new year.
Chinese New Year is the best time to be with family. And as you're reading this, I'd like to wish everyone a glorious time spent with the family this coming new year.
HUAT ARR!!
