Christmas is in the air!

Yes, my Christmas tree is up!

This is my first Canadian tree. The last 5 years, I always intended to buy a tree but never quite got to it, either because I was out of the country or just didn't get to the stores fast enough to get a good one on a good deal.

This year's tree purchase was a spur of the moment thing as well. I just happened to have a car for that day and brought my cousin to Wal-mart for a shopping spree. She wanted a Christmas tree and this one was such a steal. I had to buy one as well, along with the lights, a tree skirt and some decorations. I already had quite a few decorations which I have bought previous years in anticipation of when I will own a tree. All this turned out well, my tree looks decorated enough, does it not? Maybe the only thing missing is a bright star at the top.

In my high school years, when school was out in November and we would spend summer just doing nothing at home all day, setting up the tree would be first order of business as soon as we hit December. Have I had the choice, I probably would have waited till December so as not to seem to eager for Christmas to come. Unfortunately, obligations trumped tradition this year. I am going to be quite busy the next few week-ends ahead, so last week-end was my only chance lest I ended up not putting the tree even though I bought one this year!

Thanks to my BFF Joan, my place has an air of Christmas already!
Now to find presents to put under the tree!

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!

Valentine's Day or SAD...

February 14, a day lovers around the world await for.
Wanting to check the origin of Valentine's day, I've check wikipedia and as well as finding the different believed origins of Valentine's day, I've found that Singles Awareness Day (SAD) is celebrated on the same day.
Yes, it is true that if you're single and comes Valentine's day, you feel like the loneliest person on earth, especially if all your friends are in a relationship. So it makes sense that SAD is "celebrated" on the same day, but Asians take it even a step further, they have a Lovers-go-die club which is a club against lovers or couples (isnt' that just far-fetched or is it just me?).


The day has come and gone.
Whether you are in a relationship and you celebrated with your better half (or chose not to), or you're single and didn't celebrate (or maybe had a drink for SAD), the day is over, and gratefully, we won't have to bear the constant reminder of the media that we need to celebrate love for another year. It never used to be this commercial in MU before, but I guess with the influence of the West, Valentine's day has become quite popular over the last few years.
As one of the radio hosts was saying yesterday, why celebrate love on that day only? Why not celebrate it every day of the year, 365 days a year? The most recurring questions during the day yesterday were "so what did you get from your boyfriend/lover/husband?" or "What did you get your boyfriend/lover/husband?". Does celebrating love resume to giving gifts then?
That's what the media wants it to be about and that's what makes the day even more painful for singles.

If you're single and you survived the day without going insane, feeling lonely or sad, congrats to you. It takes a lot of wisdom to recognize that it is just an excuse for people to buy more and be theatrical about their love. Love doesn't have to be this big, as said in 1 Corinthians 13, it does not BOAST.

If you're not single and you celebrated (or not), keep in mind that there are 364 other days where you could be just as considerate for your loved one :P.

A party nation....

Today is Divali...It is the festival of lights...

"Divali is the most jovial of all Hindu festivals.... it marks the victory of righteousness over evil in the Hindu mythology. Traditionally, clay oil lamps were placed in front of every home turning the island into a fairyland of flickering lights; these have now been replaced mostly by decorative electric lights."

We've got 15 statutory holidays in MU whereas there are only 10 stat holidays in CA.
But of the 15 stat hols we have this year, 6 fell during the week-ends. Yes, in MU, we don't have stat holidays moved to Mondays or Fridays, they are fixed by whichever religious bodies have authority because they follow the festivals of the different faiths on the island.

The richness of the Mauritian culture comes from the different religions that make up the Mauritian population. We, mauritians, as a nation, we celebrate all the festivals from Chinese New Year to Eid-ul-Fitr. We share the cakes and the good wishes and the good humour and the diversity. That's way better than having BANK holidays, for example. :P
One of my Canadian friends asked the other day about Thanksgiving. No, we don't have thanksgiving here in MU, not because we don't have anything to be thankful for, it's just not something we have set up here by the first immigrants.

Check out the list of festivals and the list of holidays for 2006 in MU.