The Value of Tradition

It was Chinese New Year this past week, and I’m so glad I was able to celebrate last weekend at an ex-coworker’s house. It felt really good to 1) see friends I hadn’t seen in a while, 2) meet new people, and 3) eat lots of delicious food.

Normally I would have had Chinese New Year dinner with family, but given Covid and the fact that we just saw each other over the holidays, it was great to change it up to celebrate with (younger and less at-risk) friends instead. Of course, nothing compares to how people celebrate CNY in the motherland (Taiwan), but they also don’t have Thanksgiving/Christmas.

Since Chinese New Year is based on the lunar calendar, the actual date (and associated holidays) changes every year. Nevertheless, the celebratory family dinner is always on Chinese New Year’s Eve, with the following commonly observed traditions:

• Starting the new year with new/fresh things, which means doing the following before CNY Eve —
  • Getting a haircut
  • Washing your car
  • Cleaning your house
  • Getting new clothes to wear on CNY Eve
• Wearing red
• Burning paper money/incense for ancestors
• Exchanging/giving red envelopes (with cash inside) to kids (or anybody who’s not married)
• Eating certain foods (with some regional differences)
• Setting off firecrackers

Of these, it’s the firecrackers I care for the least. I haven’t visited Taiwan during CNY for a while, but one of my uncles always used to purchase them (illegally), and we would set them off after CNY dinner at a park down the street. Sometimes we would also set off car alarms because the firecrackers would land in the parking lot, but to my knowledge we never caused any actual property damage. Still, it felt like a dangerous affair, and I always thought we should have been wearing protective eye wear.

Last weekend’s CNY dinner with friends was a nostalgic reminder of how I used to celebrate with family in Taiwan. Not only that, but in the age of Covid it was also a reminder of normalcy and the value of face-to-face relationships with friends I’ve met over the years. And even though we didn’t follow all the commonly observed traditions, it was meaningful to get together and celebrate something that was larger than ourselves.

What traditions did you grow up with?