Lunar New Year In Chinese
The Chinese most important traditional holidays is the Lunar New year (also called spring festival). It begins on the first day of the first month in the Chinese calendar and ends on the 15th. Chinese New Year's Eve is known as chu xi ("Year-pass Eve").Concerning the celebration, the people will buy presents, food, clothing and lots of decoration and materials for good luck. Thoroughly cleans the house to sweep away any ill-fortune to make way for good incoming luck. Windows and doors will be decorated with red color paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes of “happiness”, “wealth”, and “longevity”. And during the Eve of Chinese New Year, a festive supper with families. All special foods and sweet delicacies on the table. And lightning with firecrackers will end the night.In the next early morning, children will greet the elders by wishing them a healthy and happy new year, and receive money in red paper envelopes (known as Hong Bao in Mandarin, Ang Pao in Taiwanese Hokkien and here in Philippines too and Lai See in Cantonese, and li xi in Vietnamese) .
Chinese has had influence on the new year celebrations of its geographic neighbors too, like Koreans (Seollal), Tibetans and Bhutanese (Losar), Mongolians (Tsagaan Sar), Vietnamese (Tet), and the Japanese before 1873 (Oshogatsu). Note: "Seol-nal" pronounced as “seol-lal”.This holiday started today and will end the next day (3 days holiday - Feb. 13-15) but the actual "Seol-nal" is tomorrow, Feb. 14'10, same date as Valentines day.
They said that"Seol-nal" or the Lunar new year is one of the two biggest holidays in Korean and the other one is the Thanksgiving day or “Chu-seok”, that is celebrated on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar (Sept. 21-23'10, 3 day holiday too). These holidays are based on the lunar calendar, the dates on the Gregorian calendar changes every year.
It is said that the wife of the first born son of the family are the ones who will prepare foods and everything for the celebration of the holidays. And as I've heard that made most Korean women hate the holiday.
On the first day , they do all the cooking and preparations for next morning’s offering for the ancestors in the eldest son's house. They had to make “tteok” or rice cakes, “mandu” or Korean dumplings, “jeon” or panfried food and “banchan” or side dishes.
On new year’s day, the adults wake up early to prepare the table for the ancestral rites called “cha-rye”. Foods to be offered are prepared and place properly and attractively on wooden containers (“je-gi”). Every food group has to be represented. There should be food taken from the land as well as the sea. Everybody wears a “hanbok” (traditional korean clothes). Only the men are allowed to do the offering for the ancestors, but the women in my family also pay respects by bowing (called “jeol”).
The men of the family offer the food to the ancestors by placing the spoons in the rice. They will also fill the wooden cups with wine (“sul”) and place them on the stand. After the offering, a white paper with the ancestors’ names written on it is burned. The descendants then bow (men first then the women) and after wards drink the wine and eat the food on the altar.
Then the juniors bow to the seniors and receive their new year’s “sebe ton” (money). And after the ceremony, it's the only time that the whole family can eat thier breafast in the table full of foods same as what they offered in the altar for their ancestors.
Then, they would have to visit the tombs of the ancestors.
