Celebrating the Lunar New Year

Lunar New Year – or Chinese New Year as it’s sometimes known, is celebrated on the 17th of February this year. It’s based on the lunisolar system and falls on the first day of the first lunar month (the second new moon after the winter solstice) so the date changes each year.

It’s celebrated with lots of red lanterns, fireworks, delicious food – often served at open houses, where children are handed ang pao (small envelopes of money). The ang pao is intended to bring luck, just like certain numbers (8, 6, 9), and colours (red), food (mandarin) and animals (bat, fish, lion and dragon) – all of which are linked with the ideas of wealth, abundance, longevity and protection: fundamental to the Chinese cultural heritage.

As we come out of the year of the snake and head into the year of the horse, it’s interesting to consider what that means for our year ahead. In Chinese astrology the snake is all about renewal and strategy, while the horse is a symbol of energy, change and enthusiasm; there’s an encouragement of movement, growth, opportunity and change, worth exploring in schools both in terms of the personal – what does this mean for you? – and the general: what might we see and be part of in our wider communities?

If we’re committed to creating global communities, marking the biggest, most celebrated Asian festival is a given. And the basic concepts of warding off evil with demonstrations of strength and courage, of long and prosperous lives filled with wealth and abundance, are easy to make relevant and meaningful. Because so many of the Chinese cultural references are physical and visceral, they’re easy and interesting to explore in the classroom context.

The whole Chinese zodiac system – being based around animals and the related characteristics – offers wonderful opportunities to explore personality, and there’s a lot of fun to be had with the Chinese New Year themes specifically. Taking the idea of strength and fire – through the colour red and the dragon representation, or the notion of prosperity and abundance – through representations of fish and mandarins, there are dress-up opportunities, dances and displays to be had, games to play using the lucky numbers and projects to plan on Chinese astrology.

The idea that physical representation of these themes brings luck, makes for an incredibly vibrant, positive festival, focussed on the spreading of good things to others – a theme in itself worth celebrating.

Having lived abroad as an expat in a largely Chinese community for the past two years, I’ve grown to love this festival, from the piles of oranges in all the shops, to the streets adorned with red lanterns, and the wild dragon dances. It’s a fun, effervescent tradition that breathes light into all our worlds. Although the cultural traditions may not be something we all share, the values surely are. Being active participants in what it represents enables not just a global calendar, but a global, inclusive outlook and perspective. Valuable now perhaps more than ever.