Chinese Spring Festival

On Sunday, we began the year 4705 in the chinese calendar which is a pig year.
Humm, let me phrase that again: 2007 is the year of the pig according to the chinese zodiac.

Some believe it is not just another pig year but the year of the Golden Pig, which according to certain myths, means that the babies born during this year will lead a "fat and easy life" and possibly making loads of money. So if you are ever given the opportunity to be born again and are given the choice of the year, you better choose to be born in a year of the Golden Pig! :P

Here in Mauritius, we get a public holiday for the Chinese Spring Festival. The Sino-Mauritians usually celebrate by having family dinners, giving foong pao (red envelopes with money in it!), lighting up firecrackers (to scare away bad things) and of course sharing cakes with our friends who are not of chinese descent. Some people go to the pagoda during the day to pay tribute to the gods, and some fast on that day. The customs of the day differ from family to family because our chinese ancestors were not necessarily from the same regions of China and because less and less sino-mauritians follow all the customs nowadays. Some customs are too complicated for the younger generations to learn without understanding chinese writings, so when the elders who used to perform the services , along with them goes the knowledge they carry.

I'm going to write about the little I know about today.
First, the week leading to the Chinese New year is always busy with cleaning because on the day of the new year, we cannot sweep the floors because we will also be sweeping away money we could earn during the year.

Then, on the day of the new year, people are supposed to wear new clothes. I have no idea why, but it must probably so you can get new clothes throughout the year.
Then of course the tradition where elders give foong pao to the younger generations. That again is a custom that vary among families. Some families stop giving foong pao to someone who has started working and some stop only when someone is married. But mostly, the money inside is not quite important, it is more the gesture than the monetary value.

The chinese new year celebrations basically should last for 15 days, at the end of which there is the Lantern Festival, which closes the festivities. It is at the end of the 15 days that people can go consult their "horoscopes" for the year and make promises to the gods if the "prediction" is bad, so that the year goes by with a little less unfortunate incidents.

The rest is quite unknown territory for me. I am sure there are loads other customs and traditions that should take place, but none of which I understand the purpose or timeliness. Sino-mauritians tend to comply to as many customs as they know of and to omit the unknown parts, so I am quite content doing just that also.
On that, I wish everybody a good year of the pig!