Celebrating Lunar New Year

Hey everybody, and happy new year! 2024 was an amazing year, and we’re so excited to enter 2025. But guess what? In Chinese culture, the new year hasn’t happened yet; keep reading to find out about Lunar New Year!

Lunar New Year is a festival to celebrate the Chinese New Year according to the lunar calendar. It is also known as the Spring Festival or the Chinese New Year. This year, it’s taking place on January 29, but it varies year to year from late January to early February. Popular traditions include receiving red envelopes with money, wearing traditional clothing in red, performing lion and dragon dances, and spring cleaning!

At Lakeside, many people said that they eat a big feast full of connection with family and friends. One seventh grader responded that they watch the CCTV Lunar New Year show. A sixth grader mentioned a tradition that their family observes called Lucky Dumplings. They fold dumplings and put lucky items in some of them. Another fun tradition many know about is the concept of zodiac animals. 2025 is the Year of the Snake. Every year, there is a different animal representing the year. The zodiac cycle repeats every 12 years. There is an old legend about the order of the animals and how they were chosen. There are many different versions of the legend, but below is one that I (Alice) grew up hearing!

Long ago, there were no zodiac animals. The Jade Emperor found it difficult to remember his birthday and how old he was. He decided to have the animals compete in a race, and the top twelve would become zodiac animals. One of the animals was the rat. He had reached the part of the race where he had to cross a river to get to the finish line, but he was too small. He saw an ox about to cross the river and hurried to stop it.

“Please help me to cross the river!” the rat exclaimed. “The water is too deep, and I am afraid I will drift away if I cross.” The ox agreed and told him to get on his back. They waded across the river, and when they were about to reach the end, the rat hopped off the ox’s back and crossed the finish line.

“I’m first!” the rat cried. The ox came next, followed by the tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and lastly, the pig.

Thus, it was decided that this would be the order of zodiac animals.

We hope this article helped you learn about Lunar New Year. Happy Lunar New Year and we wish you prosperity and wealth this year! Or, as we say in Chinese, 恭喜发财 (gong xi fa cai)!