Chinese New Year: A New Chance at a New Year
Here’s what I really love about Chinese New Year — besides the dancing dragons and dumplings — I love that it’s in February. How perfect. We get a whole month to test out our New Year’s resolutions, then another New Year’s Day to tweak them, just in case we overshot.
Chinese New Year is huge! And saying it’s huge is an understatement because it’s huge for one fifth of the world’s population. Chinese New Year is really like Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Years all rolled into one. And what’s critical to Chinese New Year is to start the new year off on the right foot. There are dozens of beliefs surrounding the holiday — ways to ensure luck, fortune, fertility, love, etc. — and while those are fun to learn from a cultural standpoint, they don’t hold many life lessons. However, there are also some very practical Chinese rituals that you can easily incorporate with your children to teach them the notion of starting new on Chinese New Year — February 16th.
1. Get your house in order
What this means is to give your house a top-down, behind the sofas, dust the top molding kind of cleaning. At the very least you’ll find that missing iPod and a bunch of coins. The first part of this cleaning involves decluttering, and a lot of kids need help with this. Throw away the old, broken or useless items in your house that will only serve to keep you from making a fresh start. Sometimes kids can be pack rats. Whenever we try to throw something away in our home there’s bound to be an objection from one of our daughters. We’ve actually once heard the argument “Don’t throw that away! I could make a craft out of that broken mirror!”
Next, get out the broom. According to Chinese tradition, it’s important, when sweeping, to move all the dirt and dust to the middle of the house for collection, then bring it out the back. Carrying dirt through the front door may keep good fortune from entering on New Year’s Day. Ok — this is superstition, but it might make it more exciting when enlisting the kids to sweep. The truth is, having a clean house, or a clean bedroom in a child’s case, is a way to better our spirits. We feel better when we are in clean, decluttered spaces.
2. Get yourself in order
You want to be a new you in the new year, right? Or at least you want to be your best. So make sure to get your haircut, pedicure, massage, take a long shower — whatever it takes to make yourself look and feel new. Then go buy new clothes. You don’t need to go nuts, but when the New Year comes, you want to be wearing nothing but new clothes. That goes for underwear as well. Of course for Chinese New Year, the color is red, as this was the color that long ago scared away a monster named Nian, who was terrorizing a Chinese village. But regardless of the color, the point is to feel good about yourself and to pass that notion on to your children. Without encouraging narcissism, we should teach our kids to care about how they present themselves to the world. And feeling good about yourself can go a long way to affecting mood — how you perceive the world and how the world perceives you.
3. Get debts and tasks in order
Don’t start the new year in debt to a friend or family member. Even if it’s just returning that shovel you borrowed from your neighbor last month, or your teenage daughter’s sweater. Give it back. You may not be able to pay off your mortgage, but at least you can eliminate those small debts that weigh you down every time you think of them. In the same spirit, take care of the small tasks that eat away at you everyday. In a short period of time we can all relieve considerable stress just by knocking some things off our to do list.
Forgiving grudges is another recommendation for starting the Chinese New Year. Don’t enter the new year with anger in you mind towards an old friend or colleague. Start new — inside and out.