Saints Celebrate Lunar New Year

On February 1st of every year, the festival of Lunar New Year begins. The Lunar New Year is a celebration of the new year based on the Chinese traditional lunisolar and solar calendar, which follows the moon cycles. This life-filled time of year is celebrated by many Asian countries; predominantly Southeast and East Asian countries.

Sophomore Hannah Nguyen is a Vietnamese student who loves to celebrate the luck-filled new year with various traditional festivities and elements

“Usually to celebrate, I wear my traditional dress and sometimes I and my family go to a temple; there’s usually

traditional food like mooncakes and stuff that I like to eat […] I love to see like, the people that wear costumes and from the waist down they would wear pants and it would look like dragon scales with one giant, long dragon piece on top, and basically as ‘the dragon’ walked around, people would hand it their red envelopes and the dragon would eat them, even the fireworks are different compared to here in America, for lunar new years the fireworks happen on the ground instead of the sky” says sophomore Hannah Nguyen.

While many people may recognize the red envelopes filled with money and the red lanterns that are hung, not many know what these certain things symbolize or mean for the new year and those who celebrate it. “I would love to have people celebrate it more and for it to have more actual recognition, it’s really fun and I love educating people about it because it’s a super fun way to celebrate your night since everything happens mostly at night […] I would love to have my friends celebrate it and I would love to celebrate with them”.

Junior Xinyi Tian is a Chinese student whose family has celebrated Lunar New Year for generations; eating a feast of delicious foods and coming together to celebrate as one whole family

“My family has been celebrating for generations like thousands of years ago, it’s something that everyone does in China, and it’s just naturally passed down to you […] you have this night before new years where you have all family members from all branches gather at whoever has the biggest house in the family, and then everyone prepares a huge meal like 2-3 dishes per meal for a regular day […] on Lunar New Year, some people have a whole roasted pig and stuffed chickens, chicken soup, we eat a lot of bamboo shoots, tofu, rice, and basically everyone drinks unless your like 3 years old […] ill most likely pass it down to my kids and do something, not something super grand like in china but definitely similar.”- Junior Xinyi Tian

Lunar New Year is such a magnificent holiday of wishing luck, fulfillment, and overall happiness with not only friends but family members. It’s been celebrated since it began in the Shang Dynasty (1600- 1046 BC) and shall continue to be celebrated by the next generations to come.