The Household COO

It was Valentine’s Day and also the eighth day of New Year which is the official New Year’s Day for the Hokkien Chinese. 

Why don’t Hokkiens celebrate Chinese New Year on the same day as everyone else?  About six or seven years ago, my friend B explained the legend to me.  He had been reading a book about Chinese myths and legends.  According to the legend, some spirit or god or evil being (I can’t recall which) was after all the Hokkiens.  Warned of our impending doom by some guardian angel, all the Hokkiens hid in the bamboo forest until the evil spirit left.  Since the Hokkien people were in hiding during the actual New Year’s Day, they weren’t able to celebrate the New Year so they celebrated it on the eighth day - the day they came out of hiding.  Since then, the Hokkien people have always celebrated Chinese New Year on the eighth day to commemorate their lucky escape from extinction.

Below: A picture taken in 2006 because I haven’t yet downloaded the photos from camera from this year’s celebration.

There are no photos for this event in 2007 because I was still in confinement after delivering Gavin.  I’m not sure exactly why but we weren’t supposed to perform any of the New Year ceremonies last year because I had just delivered Gavin. 

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Chinese New Year, Traditions, beliefs, special occasions, superstitions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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