By: Kayle Cole, SFU Student, and Jessica Liu, SFU Student
The spiritualism of Vietnamese celebrations — Kayle Cole
My Lunar New Year celebrations start when my mother calls her Vietnamese fortune teller to ask questions about everybody in the family. She gives the psychic our birthdays and time of birth. I can only guess that the fortune teller has a little book on the other side of the phone that categorizes the star signs and success level each person has in the new year. My mother always tells me, “If a psychic predicts your baby’s gender, it’s a 50/50 chance,” yet somehow she still goes to them for answers. I believe it’s reassurance that she’s doing something right in parenting.
Sometime on the eve of Lunar New Year, we visit My Tho Supermarket, a Vietnamese grocery store on Kingsway. There, you’ll find 30 mothers picking out the best looking fruit, ensuring they get more variety. It’s believed that the more fruits you have to offer, the better chance you’ll have at a more prosperous year.
At home, my mom places the fruit on a large plate, making sure it’s stacked like a pyramid. While she cooks a feast including rice, bitter melon soup, stir-fried vegetables, and claypot-cooked fish, we look around the house for a display table. A display table is a table that sits in our front doorway for one day of the year that will be used for praying.
We put the plate of fruits on the table, a cup of uncooked rice to hold up the incense, and a pot of tea with two cups. All the other food my mother has prepared will be on our dinner table with chopsticks and bowls to eat with — but we’re not allowed to eat it yet.
“Once everything is ready, and it’s late in the night, we open the front and back doors to allow the spirits to move through our house.”
Once everything is ready, and it’s late in the night, we open the front and back doors to allow the spirits to move through our house. My mother lights three incense sticks and says her New Year’s prayers, then my brother and I grab one each and do our internal thanks. We wait for about an hour with the doors open before closing them and eating the delicious but cold dinner.
Celebrations in China — Jessica Liu
Chinese Lunar New Year has always been a heartfelt festival I celebrate with my family. It reminds me of my Chinese heritage and honours the memories I create with loved ones; for instance, playing mahjong with my aunts and cousins as we chat and give each other life updates. Here’s how I celebrated Lunar New Year when I lived in China.
One of my favorite ways to spend the festival is making dumplings for our New Year’s Eve reunion dinner. We would normally make three types of dumplings: pork and cabbage, shrimp and chives, and chicken and corn. Instead of the traditional boiling cooking method, we steam and fry the dumplings for our family. We would gather around the kitchen table and divide ourselves into different roles: making and rolling the dough, making the different fillings, and folding the dumplings. It was usually the women of the family who made dough and the fillings, and the men would be in charge of cooking them. This is also when the elders would give the young red packets, which are envelopes they put cash into and give to the younger generations to bring them peace and good luck.
After dinner is when the annual New Year’s Gala would begin streaming. Our whole family would sit in the living room and watch the four-hour show. It usually consists of comedy skits, singing, and dancing performances — our family loves guessing what kinds of skits, songs, or dances they will perform. I remember being fascinated by this one performance during the 2014 New Year’s Gala, when a woman was twirling in a white flowy dress for four consecutive hours without stopping on a separate small stage, from the start to the end of the event. Each hour, there would be different colors and patterns of light reflected on her dress, representing the four seasons and the upcoming new year.
Finally, no Chinese Lunar New Year would be complete without ending with fireworks. Watching the night sky filled with colorful lights reminds us of how lucky we are to gather as a family and spend the new year.
