How a quick conversation shaped my perspective on a lifetime of traditions.
By Kane Carpenter
A good friend once explained the meaning of traditions, celebrations and festivities to me very succinctly in three words:
We’re still here.
Having heard that, I started to feel exactly how you’re probably feeling at the moment, too – confused, puzzled, and bemused. How can someone explain the meaning behind why we celebrate occasions like Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah, or Thanksgiving so simplistically? How can so many celebrations – each society possessing their own traditions and customs – come down to the basic premise that all we’re celebrating is the fact that we are still here.
But that is exactly what celebrations are.
Stripped of the food, the drink, the money and decorations, all that is left are people interacting with people; the same interactions that were occurring hundreds, if not, thousands of years ago during the same exact celebratory occasions.
There is no larger example of my friend’s assertion than a tradition as significant as Chinese New Year.
Chinese New Year is the most significant and important of traditional Chinese holidays. And though, according to the Gregorian calendar, these fifteen days of celebration that occur at the beginning of the lunar calendar year tend not to fall on the same days every year, there can be no mistaking when the Chinese community is gearing up for this large tradition.
Chinese communities will adorn their residences with red and gold posters and ornaments, fill little red packets with money, and make glamorous amounts of food for family and friends and, together, usher in the New Year.
Clad in a customary new outfit and a clean haircut, the Chinese community will set off fire crackers at Chinese New Year and set up markets that sell gifts and flowers with symbolic meanings – usually good luck, prosperity, and health.
And just like almost all other celebrations that are celebrated around the world, Chinese New Year has a back story that explains its origins – the story of a dragon called Nian and a village’s battle to ward off the crop-eating, livestock-destroying mythical beast with the color red.
However, whether you believe in back stories is another issue. But to return to my friend’s wisdom, the real beauty of celebrating different customs and traditions are not the differences between societies and cultures, but the one aspect to festivity that unites everyone.
The scene of family and friends gathered around a table, eating and laughing, is one that is not unique to Chinese New Year, and that is exactly the point that my friend was trying to make by saying, “We’re still here.”
Human beings hold life sacred. And it is mortality that is the root of all celebrations. How we choose to celebrate the fact that we are still here is completely up to each individual to decide. For the Chinese community, myself included, we choose to celebrate Chinese New Year.
