It's the YEAR OF THE PIG

Pigs have a beautiful personality and are blessed with good fortune in life.

Kicking off the main festivities is the Little Year on January 28th, with the Spring Festival officially beginning February 5th (February 4th is New Year's Eve) and ending with the Lantern Festival on February 19th. 

Little Year

Preparations for the new year begin on 

January 28th, 2019, and last until 

New Years Eve.

• Activities & traditions
  This is another day of memorial and prayer ceremonies. Main activities include house cleaning to sweep away bad luck (扫年—sǎo nián) and pray to the stove god (祭灶—jì zào).
• Food
  Sugar melons (糖瓜—táng guā), also known as stove candy (灶糖—Zào táng), are made of malt and can only be found on this day. Other food include baked wheat cakes (火烧 – huǒ shāo) and tofu soup (豆腐汤—dòufu tang).

Some symbolic vegetables to consider are:

• Seaweed: symbolize wealth and fortune
• Lotus seeds: a blessing for many children and a healthy family
• Bamboo shoots: represent longevity, as well as going onward and up
• Muskmelon and grapefruit: symbolize family and hope. In addition, grapefruit symbolizes wealth and prosperity
• Osmanthus flower petals: in Chinese, osmanthus (桂—guì) is a homophone 贵, which means noble and precious
• Leek/chives: leek (韭—jiǔ) sounds similar to 久, meaning long and everlasting
• Poria mushrooms: another play on words, this mushroom (茯苓—fú líng)sounds similar to 福禄 (fú lù), or blessings and fortune

We have red envelopes 

good to ward off Evil

Fabulous Text pages, and Joss Papers 

Asian, Chinese, Japanese are included

Spring Festival

Chinese New Year officially begins 

on February 5th, 2019, 

and ends on February 19th.

A feast of everyone’s favorites and specialties:

Eggs: big and healthy family

Lobster: endless money rolling in

Shrimp: fortune and wealth

Roasted pig: peace

Duck: loyalty

Peaches: longevity

Tofu: happiness and fortune for the entire family

Fish: surplus and wealth  

                

• Activities & traditions 
  The reunion dinner, the most important meal of the year, takes place on this day. After dinner, the children will receive red envelopes. The family will then stay up late and wait for the New Year (守岁—shǒu suì).

Lantern Festival

Preparations begin the 16th, 

and the Lantern Festival is held 

on February 19th.

• Activities & traditions    

Firecrackers start off a day of greetings and blessings between neighbors. 

There are no specific activities other than celebrating the New Year. The ancient Chinese will record and analyze the weather, stars and moon to predict the fortunes of the year. The practice is known as zhàn suì.

• Food
  In addition to food from last night, people can also celebrate with Tu Su wine (屠苏酒—tú sū jiǔ).

• Superstitions & beliefs
  It is forbidden to sweep or clean on this day, else good fortune will be swept away.

Enjoy the New Year, have some noodles and share greetings!