Wishing you good health, prosperity and happiness: exploring the rituals and traditions of Chinese New Year

Abstract

Chinese New Year rituals and traditions are celebrated annually by Chinese communities around the world. This ‘festival of the year’, with its emphasis on renewal and a fresh start, is widely acknowledged as the most important festivity in the traditional Chinese calendar with a history that dates back centuries. Each year Chinese communities around the world joyfully exchange the signature greeting in the customary manner – Kung Hei Fat Choi! As a time to honour deities and ancestors, Chinese New Year is accompanied by various rituals, traditions, customs and taboos. Some of them are carryovers from the ancient practices of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism (Bennett 1986). According to Yeung and Yee (2010), these traditions originated during the early Xia Dynasty (twenty-first to sixteenth centuries BCE) and have persisted over time. The enduring rituals and traditions in the Chinese community can be explained by two key thoughts from Confucianism. As the most influential way of thinking in the Chinese community, Confucianism advocates that certain virtues (namely propriety, humanity, righteousness, wisdom and faithfulness) are essential for ensuring a stable and orderly society (Martinsons 1996). In terms of propriety, for example, conforming to the customs and traditions put in place by ancestors is important for sustaining a stable and orderly society (Martinsons 1996). As such, while many modern Chinese may not necessarily believe in all of the traditional rituals, many are still performed by families before and during the celebration. As with many traditions, the sometimes curious rituals of Chinese New Year incorporate complicated historical antecedents that have specific cultural implications. While regional customs and traditions vary somewhat throughout the world, similar symbolic meanings are shared among some common rituals or practices throughout the celebration such as: diligent cleaning of the house to sweep away any bad luck from the preceding year; the displaying of red decorations on doors and windows; the hanging of red lanterns; a family feast (often consisting of fish, pork, chicken, duck, dumplings and sticky cake) attended by all family members; red fireworks and firecrackers to ward off evil spirits; the giving of red envelopes containing money to junior members of the family andthe exchanging of small gifts among friends as a form of blessing; receiving a haircut and the wearing of new clothes and shoes to symbolise a new start; and lion and dragon dances that are thought to bring rain and good luck. In this chapter we consider the role of Chinese New Year in sustaining social cohesion in the Chinese community – an area that has received limited scholarly attention to date. Drawing on a thorough examination of these rituals, this chapter explores the concepts in a holistic manner and examines how particular rituals built on tradition have helped develop distinctive identities and ways of thinking for those who engage in these sometimes peculiar rituals. Falassi argues that festivals modify our normal sense of time with various ritualistic movements that are carried out from the beginning to the end of the festival. This modification creates a so-called ‘time out of time’ – with a respectfully observed temporal dimension devoted to each key activity (Falassi 1987: 4). The Chinese New Year celebrations indeed place our normal sense of time in something of a holding pattern while festival (atypical) time is taken to focus on others – particularly the family. Festivals usually consist of a number of ritual acts or rites. The rites that form key functions in the Chinese New Year festival are: the rites of purification, rites of conspicuous display, rites of conspicuous consumption and rites of exchange (Falassi 1987). Having introduced our approach in this chapter, some further background on this festival that is so critical to Chinese identity will now be explored.