Some customs for Chinese lunar New Year
Just came back from a long holiday---the spring festival vacation, which is one of the most important holidays in China. Each one prepares for this holiday long time before it; we’ve got company annual parties; we’ve got friends gathering and we’ve also got lots of greetings from various ways. Wow, that’s really a busy time, but we all love it! Look, here’s a photo from our company annual party, quite a happy time, right? Lol, let’s share some traditional customs of the Chinese spring festival. BTW, the girl in blue is me...
Spring Festival couplets
Before the spring festival, each family has a new couplets put up outside the door. According to the Wikipedia, couplet is “a pair of lines of verse. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.” The content on the spring festival couplets usually consists of a good wish or a description of the social background.
In the meanwhile，some people will put up the character “福”(means a good fortune) everywhere in the home, such as the door, the wall or even the furniture, by which people yearn towards a happy life in the coming year and show their wish for a wonderful future.
Watch Night
Another important movement is to stay up late or all night on New Year's Eve to welcome the New Year. On the New Year’s Eve, the whole family will get together to have a family reunion dinner which is quite splendid and delicious. After the dinner, people will light the candle or oil lantern and talk about some interesting things to welcome the New Year. Certainly, the candle and oil lantern have been outmoded and people will chat and watch TV instead. Watch Night has the meaning of getting rid of all the evils and diseases so that everything will go well in the New Year.
Lucky money
At the New Year eve, seniors will distribute the prepared lucky money to their children when kids go and wish them a happy new year. It is said that the lucky money can make children get rid of evil things and help their children have a peaceful year. Usually, there are two ways to give the lucky money; one is to pack the money with red paper and give away to children directly; the other is to hide the money under children’s pillow after they fall in sleep. Nowadays, the previous one is much general. This tradition is still popular now, and children usually use the money to buy firecrackers, toys, candy or something else they want. Maybe this is the reason why spring festival is quite popular among children.
Fortune
In Chinese, it is said that the first day of the lunar year is Broom’s birthday, so people can not use broom on this day, otherwise they will sweep their fortune away and get a bad luck. If they have to, people should sweep the floor from outside to inside. Similarly, it is also not forbidden to empty the trash, which means you will encounter a financial setback.
