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Praying about the flow of time: Chinese New Year

Lynne Baab • Tuesday January 21 2025

Praying about the flow of time: Chinese New Year

Did you know apples play a role in both the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and Chinese New Year? The symbolism is different. Jews often eat applesauce and other foods made with apples to symbolize their desire for sweetness in the coming year. In both Mandarin and Cantonese, the first syllable of the words “apple” and “peace” are the same. So, some Chinese people eat apples to symbolize their desire for peace in the New Year.

Chinese New Year is January 29 this year, and people in Asia and those of Asian descent all over the world will eat a diverse range of foods as symbols. Here are only a few. Long noodles symbolize longevity. Sunflower, pumpkin, and other seeds symbolize fertility. In some dialects in southern China, the word for mandarin oranges is a homonym for luck, so oranges have become a New Year’s food even in places where different dialects are spoken.

I was hoping to give a nice brief history of Chinese New Year for those of you, like me, who did not grow up celebrating it. But, wow, the Wikipedia entry on Chinese New Year is the longest entry I have ever seen on Wikipedia. Various Chinese dynasties brought in various New Year’s traditions. Other countries in Asia have adopted components of Chinese New Year and then adapted them to their culture. The enormous Chinese diaspora around the world has also adapted to their new cultures and kept some Chinese New Year traditions.

Last week, I emailed with four people of Chinese descent in my congregation. One of them, a second-generation Taiwanese American, refers to the holiday as Lunar New Year, and on the holiday, he loves to have friends over for hotpot.  He wrote, “For me, hot pot represents the community that Lunar New Year celebrates. There’s something really special about cooking your food together in a shared pot as you jostle with one another, helping each other reach the foods, chatting and laughing as you go along, inevitably spilling something or making a mess and cleaning it up together. It’s such a communal, chaotic, and fun time together.”

He joked that as a child, he “really appreciated the holiday because I got money from many of the adults in my life in a red envelope.” Red is a popular color during Chinese New Year because of a legend that Chinese New Year started when a monster was warded off by the color red and the loud noise of fireworks.

Another friend is Chinese-Canadian. He wrote, “For me, growing up in Vancouver, BC, Chinese New Year was a one-day affair, which is different than many places in China where it can be a week-long holiday. For us, it was a day that revolved around food and spending quality time eating and joking with friends and family. Much of the food symbolized fortune and luck. For example, we ate dumplings and spring rolls because they look like gold ingots. A whole steamed fish is important because it symbolizes abundance. As I have grown older, I have clung to the importance of food as a gateway to my culture.”

The third friend who helped me learn about Chinese New Year grew up in Hong Kong. He also calls the holiday Lunar New Year and compares it to Thanksgiving, especially the night before the New Year. “Families would gather for an end-of-year meal. We would go to my grandparents’ home, crammed into a 2 bedroom apartment with all my aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was crowded but fun and cozy. Some people came in and out because they had to eat at both sets of grandparents. So there was plenty of movement.”

He recalls the next two or three days of walking around the city with family members, seeing people dancing and hearing drums, cymbals, and firecrackers, and visiting other family members. “Making the rounds,” he called it, and it took strategic phone calls to figure out who was at home to receive visitors. His church in Hong Kong celebrated Lunar New Year, too, by giving out red pocket envelopes with Bible verses and lunar calendars with biblical references. 

The fourth person who told me about her experiences grew up in China in the 70s and 80s. She also remembers a sense of expectation for the special holiday, time with family, much richer food than usual, and gifts of money in red envelopes. Her story is so vivid and beautifully detailed that I have included it in its entirety below for you to enjoy.

My Chinese-Canadian friend reflected on the intersection of his faith and this holiday: “I see it as a holiday that invites us to think about having fresh starts. I think there is also an aspect of Chinese New Year that I do not like, too much focus on the importance of wealth. I like to turn that around and really try to focus on the wealth of friendships that I have. That is what I celebrate.”

I love the way that these four friends think of Chinese New Year as a holiday that emphasizes and nurtures relationships. I love picturing groups of family members walking the streets of Hong Kong and mainland China visiting other family members. I love picturing friends having hotpot to celebrate the New Year. I enjoy all the food symbolism associated with the holiday. Maybe I’ll have an apple on January 29 as a symbol of my prayers for peace and sweetness.

Questions for reflection: What settings, activities, and holidays help you nurture relationships? If you could choose one food to symbolize something you value, what would that be?

God who created diverse peoples and cultures, we pray for people of Chinese descent all around the world who will be gathering with family and friends next week to celebrate the New Year. Bless them with strong relational connections, affection, and love.

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Next week: Anna, Simeon, and the presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Illustration by Dave Baab: art installation for 2024 Chinese New Year — the Year of the Dragon — at Southcenter Mall in Renton, Washington.

Related posts:

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My friend’s description of Chinese New Year in her childhood:

When I was a child in China, the most anticipated day of the year was the Lunar New Year. Those winters were harsher. People had less. Families were bigger and often multi-generational. On New Year’s Eve, my family gathered to make dumplings together while observing the long night. The silence of the night was constantly punctuated by the firecrackers near and far. My sister and I would fight sleep until midnight, when the new zodiac year began, knowing brand-new clothes awaited us in the morning.

On the morning of the New Year’s Day, air still filled with lingering smoke, we rode our bicycles through town to my grandparents’ home. By noon, the house would overflow with uncles, aunts, and cousins. Then came the moment I always dreaded – the ceremonial bowing to our grandparents, three times! All for good health and longevity. More traditional families even kept the traditional kowtow. Whatever embarrassment it might have caused, the red envelopes ensued would more than make up for it.

To my parents the red envelope exchange was just a zero-sum game. Those crisp new bills I was gifted would swiftly get confiscated and “safeguarded” by my parents, only to redistribute them later to other children in a different envelope. On rare occasions when we manage to keep one or two, my sister and I would rush to buy firecrackers, burning through our “fortune” into fun of sound and light that could last for hours.

The Spring Festival [another way to describe Chinese New Year] transformed our modest lives into weeks of abundance. In 1970s and ’80s China, protein-rich meals were a luxury, but the festival brought daily feasts. Every celebration had its significance: dumplings on winter solstice (lest our ears freeze off, as the saying went), sweets for the kitchen god on the 23rd of Lunar December (to ensure favorable reports to heaven), and elaborate family banquet on Lunar New Year's Day. The celebrations continued with married daughters visiting their parents on the second day, extended family and neighbor gatherings on the third, and twelve more days of festivities, concluding with sweet rice dumplings and lantern parade on the 15th of the first Lunar month.

Not being able to celebrate Lunar New Year with family was hard in my first years in America. With family scattered across continents and friends here absorbed in their American routines, attempts to recreate the celebrations felt a bit hollow.  Years passed without that familiar anchor, leaving a void that I felt keenly around this time of the year.

Now, I watch my children anticipate Christmas with the same fervor as I once had for Lunar New Year, and their longing is shared by mine. Christmas Eve at church — the stars, candles, carols — has become our new tradition. In the absence of extended family, our church community fills that space. The celebration of Christ's birth with friends, the building anticipation through Advent, and the late-night service have become deeply meaningful. When I see my children wake up on Christmas morning, their eyes bright with hope and delight, I recognize a similar magic that once defined my New Years, equally precious but transformed.



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