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Children Chinese – Chinese Festivals (1)

CHINESE NEW YEAR

Chinese New Year is a very old celebration, a time for repaying debts, enjoying feasts, giving “red envelopes” of lucky money to friends and relatives, and remembering ancestors. 
  Yan Yat  - The seventh day of the Chinese New Year is called Yan Yat, “Everybody’s Birthday.”

There are many old and delightful ancient superstitions surrounding this holiday. A wonderful school site in Holland shares some funny ones: Chinese New Year superstitions. 

Here’s one of my favorites!  Once upon a time ….

 

Long ago, in Han times, there was a monster whose name was “Nian”. This monster came once each year to a little village and scared everyone! One day, just by luck, the villagers discovered that “Nian” had a couple fears of his own. He was afraid of the color red and even more afraid of scary loud noises! The villagers prepared. When “Nian” appeared, everyone in the village ran for the red banners and noise makers they had made. They waved their banners and rattled their noise makers. This scared “Nian” so much that “Nian” ran away and was never heard from again! 

 

 

Which explains why people in China believe the color red signifies joy and luck, and why noise makers are rattled on Chinese New Year. At midnight, firecrackers, paper dragons, noise makers, the waving of red ribbons and banners all help to drive away any lingering evil spirits from the old year. (In case “Nian” is still lurking about somewhere!)

(Source: ancienthistory.mrdonn.org)

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 15th, 2008 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Children Chinese, learn Chinese. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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