Discussions

The celebration of New Year’s Eve in the Chinese calendar will be observed tonight with several popular traditions meant to attract good fortune and health, prosperity, closer family ties, and peace in every household.  
 
Festivals, parades, dragon and lion dances, fireworks, family gatherings, and visiting friends and relatives traditionally mark the celebration of the eve of the Chinese New Year or Spring Festival, the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays.  
 
Homes have been thoroughly cleaned, new clothings and shoes will be worn, doors, windows, and lights will be opened, altars will be cleaned, repainted, and given new decorations.  
 
Fruits believed to invite good fortune will be placed on tables, doors and window panes will be given a fresh coat of paint, and the color red, believed to scare evil spirits and bad fortune, will be used in decorating.  
 
Lucky money in red envelopes will be given to children before they sleep, sweets will be served, while some will bathe in boiled pomelo leaves for good health.  
 
Food will be in abundance during the New Year’s Eve dinner tonight, consisting of fish, chicken, dumplings, nuts, noodles, and sweets like the popular glutinous rice flour (tikoy) to symbolize prosperity, abundance, and good fortune as well as in thanksgiving for the blessings of the past year.  
 
The celebration of the Chinese New Year traditionally begins on the first day of the first lunar month in the Chinese calendar and ends 15 days later with the observance of the Lantern Festival.  
 
The year 2009 is the Year of the Ox, which is also known by its formal name of "Ji Chou."  
 
Often mistaken to mean Happy New Year, "Kung Hei Fat Choi!" is Cantonese for "Congratulations and be prosperous."  
 
According to legend, greetings of congratulations were exchanged in ancient China during the celebration of the first New Year after the people survived a man-eating beast.  
 
The beast was said to be afraid of the color red and loud noises. The ancient Chinese drove and scared the creature away through firecrackers.  
 
Kung Hei Fat Choi! to all eBrandon friends!