I am finally finding a few minutes of time to write one of my favourite posts! Its time to share our Chinese New Year adventure for 2014.
This year Chinese New Years landed on January 31st. 2014 is the year of the Horse.
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| red envelope with our chocolate money |
Chinese New Year is celebrated in Chinese cultures each year. Unlike our North American new year which is celebrated January 1st of each year, Chinese New Year follows the Lunar calendar and its date changes. Each year is categorized by one of the 12 Chinese zodiac symbols. Chinese New Year lasts 15 days and ends with the lantern festival. The holiday is filled with specific traditions and lots of symbolization. We have enjoyed learning LOTS about this fun holiday, and every year we seem to learn a little more!
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| fireworks in the front yard |
This year was again such a great time. On January 31st Grace and I made fortune cookies and milk tea (mmm my favourite) to share with the ladies at work. It was a great success and fun to include them in our celebrations. On Saturday we were blessed to celebrate with family and friends ( the most important part). We had a great visit and got to try out some new food. We love to have a good mix of "North American" and Asian food and this year our friends blessed us by bringing some delicious food to add to our wide variety of selection. It was so fun to have the kids running around and celebrating. Once we finished up with the food we bundled up to head outside to enjoy fireworks and flying lanterns. This year was much more successful without the blizzard raging, but it was very cold and everyone was very brave to stay outside for so long. To end off a wonderful evening we sent everyone home with traditional red envelopes with chocolate "money" inside!
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| lanterns ready to fly! |
Some people question why we have started celebrating Chinese New Year, as Grace would not know any different. First, it is so much fun and a great reason to spend time with the people we love. Second, it never hurts to stretch and grow and educate ourselves on the different holidays and cultures around the world… in fact it is a lot of fun! and lastly, while Grace will some day be a Canadian, part of her story will always be in Taiwan. We do not want to hide that, we want to celebrate that! One of the ways we choose to do so is to take time to have some fun and celebrate a major chinese holiday. We have also chosen other ways to bring her culture and history, language etc to our life because she is important to us!
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| our musical entertainment for the evening |
Thank you to everyone who made Chinese New Year so much fun this year! We are blessed to be surrounded by so many wonderful people!
Blessings
