CHINESE NEW YEAR AND THE YEAR OF THE HORSE
February 23, 2002

Chinese New Year starts with the New Moon on the first day of the new year and ends on the full moon 15 days later. The 15th day of the new year is called the Lantern Festival, which is celebrated at night with lantern displays and children carrying lanterns in a parade.

New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are celebrated as a family affair, a time of reunion and thanksgiving. The celebration was traditionally highlighted with a religious ceremony given in honor of Heaven and Earth, the gods of the household and the family ancestors.

The sacrifice to the ancestors, the most vital of all the rituals, united the living members with those who had passed away. Departed relatives are remembered with great respect because they were responsible for laying the foundations for the fortune and glory of the family.

The presence of the ancestors is acknowledged on New Year's Eve with a dinner arranged for them at the family banquet table. The spirits of the ancestors, together with the living, celebrate the onset of the New Year as one great community. The communal feast called "surrounding the stove" or weilu. It symbolizes family unity and honors the past and present generations.

Preparations tend to begin a month from the date of the Chinese New Year, when people start buying presents, decorations, food and clothing. Everyone cleans up before the event to start the new year with a blank slate. Houses are cleaned from top to bottom to sweep away any traces of bad luck, and doors and windowpanes are given a new coat of paint, usually red, and then decorated with paper printed with couplets with themes such as happiness, wealth and longevity.

New Year’s eve is the most exciting part of the event, as anticipation creeps in. Traditions and rituals are carefully observed in everything from food to clothing. Dinner is usually a feast of seafood and dumplings, signifying different good wishes. The menu features include prawns for liveliness and happiness, dried oysters (ho xi) for all things good, raw fish salad or yu sheng to bring good luck and prosperity, Fai-hai (angel hair), an edible hair-like seaweed to bring prosperity, and dumplings boiled in water (Jiaozi) signifying a long-lost good wish for a family. Red is the customary color worn to ward off evil spirits -- black and white are avoided because they are associated with mourning. At midnight, the sky is lit up by fireworks.

On the day itself, an ancient custom called Hong Bao, meaning Red Packet, takes place. Married couples give children and unmarried adults money in red envelopes, and families go from door to door, greeting first their relatives and then their neighbors. At Chinese New Year, grudges from the previous year are cast aside.

The end of the New Year is marked by the Festival of Lanterns, which is a celebration with singing, dancing and lantern shows.

Although celebrations of the Chinese New Year vary, the underlying message is one of peace and happiness for family members and friends.

CHINESE LUNAR CALENDAR
The Chinese Lunar New Year is the longest chronological record in history, dating from 2600 BC, when the Emperor Huang Ti introduced the first cycle of the zodiac. Like the Western calendar, The Chinese Lunar Calendar is a yearly one, with the start of the lunar year being based on the cycles of the moon. Therefore, because of this cyclical dating, the beginning of the year can fall anywhere between late January and the middle of February. A complete cycle takes 60 years and is made up of five cycles of 12 years each.

The Chinese Lunar Calendar names each of the twelve years after an animal. Legend has it that the Lord Buddha summoned all the animals to come to him before he departed from earth. Only twelve came to bid him farewell and as a reward he named a year after each one in the order they arrived. The Chinese believe the animal ruling the year in which a person is born has a profound influence on personality, saying: "This is the animal that hides in your heart."

2002 is the Year of the Horse. People born in the Year of the Horse are hard-working and very independent. Although they are intelligent and friendly, they can also be selfish. People born during the Year of the Horse make good scientists or poets.

Famous people born in the Year Of The Horse include Robert Wagner, Helmut Kohl, Clint Eastwood, Barbara Streisand, Aretha Franklin

CHINESE LUNAR CALENDAR