Chinese New Year!

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR - 2007
Gong Xi Fa Cai!

The year we bring our baby home!

The oldest and most important festival in China is the Spring Festival, more commonly known in the West as Chinese New Year. Like all Chinese festivals, the date of the new year is determined by the lunar/solar calendar rather than the Western (Gregorian) calendar, so the date of the holiday varies from late January to mid February.

The Spring festival celebrates the earth coming back to life, and the start of ploughing and sowing. In the past, feudal rulers of dynasties placed great importance on this occasion, and ceremonies to usher in the season were performed.

Preparations for the New Year festival start during the last few days of the last moon. Houses are thoroughly cleaned, debts repaid, hair cut and new clothes bought. Doors are decorated with vertical scrolls of characters on red paper whose texts seek good luck and praise nature, this practice stemming from the hanging of peach-wood charms to keep away ghosts and evil spirits. In many homes incense is burned, and also in the temples as a mark of respect to ancestors.

Legend has it that in ancient times, Buddha asked all the animals to meet him on Chinese New Year. Twelve came, and Buddha named a year after each one. He announced that the people born in each animal's year would have some of that animal's personality.