Cheung Nian Chau yut

Happy New Year! Sun Tain geen Hong, Gong hei faht choi, sai gai wo ping, everything goo dthat there is to say in four syllables.
Like I said before my experience of growing up of Chinese New Year in the home was limited. My mother would give me red envelopes and when some family friends came over to visit and told us we should set up a Chinese New Year latar to my father we did, quickly, with some incense, oranges and a picture.
Apparently, while talking to my Si Hing you are supposed to have a meaty feast while bowing to the gods and ancestors the "night before" with Chicken and fau yuk and all that. That ended up not happening at Moh Goon but we did the little panda version. Then at 11pm which is technically the next day for Chinese who used to go by "see sun"s instead of hours I guess, they eat a vegetarian meal and bow to the ancestors and gods again. Basically the old way is to try and be vegetarian for the new year's season, or ten days of it. The modern compromise is to eat a vegetarian meal right after you just ate a huge meal and apparently most people don't really follow a lot of this. Well none of that stuff was in the books I read and even though I new some of it, well I just didn't gt it together this year.

What I did do, is set up an altar to my mother (and invisible gods, God my dad and whoever else wanted to share three incense sticks. That's right not even 9.. because I don't want it to get too smoky in the house.) in an American made up version of what we used to do at my house as a kid. I had no picture so I just used this wooden box drum my mom had made for me to represent her. Three oranges. Though where as the oranges are supposed to be an offering, on my altar to an invisible God it was almost like the oranges had their own meaning. We had the traditional Chinese meal of oatmeal and fruit topped with sugary cereal for breakfast. (I know oatmeal is not a Traditional dish.)
The red envelopes and some gut I set out and I made the kids do a Lion Dance to get it, to make our religion interactive and tactile. It was quit the disaster because Jonah didn't want to get under the tail and I ended up pulling out the big head and finishing it for them while Noah played drums. So I broke every rule there was. But at least we did something as a family, well as most of the family since Grace is in Rhode Island for work.
Nest year I'll try to do stuff closer to the actual traditions. In fact in talking to my Si Hing today I was thinking there should be a real handbook for Chinese New Year stuff. Like that Pagan Christmas book I read. We have some kids books that cover all the Chinese Holidays and superstitions and one that is just random facts. But those are hard to use and how can you have all the holidays in one book? They should make like 12 books for each Holiday. (There is at least one Holiday a month so I just threw 12 out there. They tend to be on the full moon. Except Chinese New Year which sort of has several Holidays in one 1-15 right?)

Well now to make dinner, which will just be what we have in the house. I'll do better next year. But even for this year, we will do a lot of lion dances and all that, so they will have their Chinese New Year memories just like I had.