On Monday, the Chinese welcome in the Year of the Ox. The Chinese New Year is a vibrant festival and great fun to celebrate at home with traditional food, handmade lanterns, storytelling and music. Here are a few ideas for creating your own celebration with your family.
The New Year celebration is the most important of Chinese holidays; a time for feasting with family, celebration, fireworks and gift-giving. The fifteen day holiday begins on the first day of a new moon and ends with the full moon on the day of the Lantern Festival. As the Chinese calendar is based on the lunar year the date changes every year.
Storytelling
Each year in the Chinese calendar is named after an animal. It is said that Buddha invited all of the animals to join him for a New Year celebration, but only 12 animals turned up. To reward the animals that did come, Buddha named a year after each of them in the order that they arrived, starting with the Rat, followed by the Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat (or Sheep), Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. A great story to share is The Great Race by Dawn Casey.
Get crafty
To celebrate the year of the Ox, you could make Ox badges. To decorate the house, you could make a string of colourful paper lanterns using pages from an old magazine. It is also fun to make lanterns from empty glass jars so that you can place a tealight inside each one and your house will glow with candlelight. You might like to practice some Chinese symbols to paint directly onto the glass. I also like these felt fortune cookies that can be made for decoration.
Food and drink
You can keep this simple and serve a stir fry with rice or noodles that can be eaten with chopsticks. Start the meal with a greeting such as Kung hei fat choy, meaning “Wishing you to prosper.” Fortune cookies are always fun and if you make your own you can hide positive affirmations inside.
Play Games
You can play traditional games such as Chinese Dominoes, also know as Tiu-u or Hopping Chicken, which is similar to hopscotch. Or perhaps explore the ancient art of T’ai Chi. Ideas for rhythm games and songs for Chinese New Year can be found at Nancy Music.
Melissa Corkhill is the editor of The Green Parent magazine, mother of two and author of the book Green Parenting
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2 comments in response to this article
Awesome website and magazine. However, I was surprised that you redirected the crafts for Chinese Lanterns etc. to other websites that are not green. For example Kaboose advertises disposable diapers. There are so many Moms out there that would be happy to provide a craft link for you that mirrors your mandate.
Hi HalfMagic Mama,
Thank you for your comments. I would love to be able to link to crafts and activities on sites that have the same ethos as us at The Green Parent and would really welcome any recommendations that you have. We are also working on some project pages for green kids that we can put up on our site for our readers. I love this dragon craft from a home educating family.
All best wishes,
Melissa
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