Chinese New Year-Homeschooled Holidays

I used to bemoan the idea that my kids might miss out on class holiday parties being homeschooled and all, but it turns out that the class party is going the way of the dinosaurs. Now, I'm glad they are homeschooled so they can have a Christmas party with their friends and actually *say* "Merry Christmas". We can have a Halloween party if we want, or an Easter egg hunt. We can make valentines and little mailboxes to put them in.

One of the homeschool groups we participate in operates under the umbrella of the public school system, and it's been fun to organize gatherings with a large group of people to participate. It's something we have a unique opportunity to do, because it's parents that are spearheading it. Of course, *because* it's a public school umbrella, we can't say "Christmas Party"; we had to say "Winter Festival." But it was a Christmas party. ;)

But hey, I like parties. So that's not enough. ;) Last year, one of my dearest friends and I started celebrating a different holiday each month. It wasn't really intentional; we just decided we wanted to have a Valentine's Day party, and it was so much fun we decided to do a St. Patrick's Day party. And it just grew from there. Most of the time it's just been our two families, though we have welcomed others. February marks a year of this, though there were a few months we missed due to life circumstances. Since we celebrated Valentine's Day last year, we started thinking that maybe we'd try to do a different holiday each month.

For January, originally we were going to celebrate MLK JR day, but again, life circumstances intervened. And so it was, at nearly the end of January, that we switched our "January" holiday to be Chinese New Year. Technically, Chinese New Year falls in February, but the festival in our city was the last weekend in January, so we figured it worked out. ;)



We celebrated the Chinese New Year in two parts. First, the festival. It was held in the International District of our city. We enjoyed the long dragon and the lions dancing through the streets, a magician, the various shops (Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc), martial arts demonstrations,



lantern-making, balloon animals and face painting, trying new foods in the Chinese bakery and Chinese BBQ restaurant,



and more martial art demonstrations. The husbands really seemed to enjoy that part. ;)



It is always a valuable experience to embrace a culture from its own point of view, and experience something in context and through their eyes. I remember, when I was a very young girl, my own parents taking me to the festival. I don't remember much about the experience except that everything was brightly colored, and the Chinese restaurant where we ate. It was perhaps my first experience with authentic fried rice, and I fell in love. I also remember that I got my own cup of green tea. Chinese have various types of tea, including black teas, but as my friend S puts it, green tea is like water to them. Coming from an Irish/English background, this was my first go at green tea. I thought it tasted very strange, but very good. I remember the smell of it. And the thing I most vividly remember was the Chinese zodiac that was on our placemats. I was totally fascinated by it, though I was perturbed that I wasn't a majestic horse or cute rabbit but rather a rooster.

I hoped to create some of that experience for my kids, the wonder of something completely different and foreign and yet so close to home. People are people; equal and wonderful and valuable. Cultures are cultures; equal but different and rich. We can all learn from each other; to see through another's eyes is the basis for compassion and empathy. It is a very godly quality to embrace diversity and walk a mile in another's shoes. To see through another's eyes is also the basis for higher learning and understanding. That doesn't mean that all ideas are equally good or valid, but we gain discernment through learning and testing them. If we only think one way, ever, we will never prove our convictions in the fire.

In a developmental psychology course I took in college, we talked about a concept of maturity along these lines. I can't recall the name of the convention or who came up with it, but essentially there are three stages in maturity. First, the concrete stage. This is childhood; where we unequivocally and unquestioningly accept whatever our parents tell us as truth. We learned this way of thinking, we learned this set of facts, and that is that. Second, the questioning stage. This usually happens in the teens, in high school and particularly college. Often, the individual rejects everything or most things that their parents taught them in favor of the new and different information they get in the larger, less insulated world.

The problem is that often, people get stuck in one of these stages. Ironically, one thing they both share is closed-mindedness. In the concrete stage, they cannot see past what they have learned rotely, and do not think more of it except to repeat it endlessly. In the questioning stage, it's not that suddenly their minds are open and everything is different and better. It's that they've swung from one end of the pendulum to the other, trading one kind of reasoning or thought or ideology or extreme for another.

The path to true maturity comes when we are able to look at it all fair-mindedly. Often, in this stage, individuals find themselves re-embracing the things taught to them by their parents, but with their own voice and perspective instead of their parents' voice and perspective. Some things are embraced and some things are rejected from both the concrete and questioning stage. All of this little tangent to say, I think it's valuable to open children up to the wealth of the world. The ideas, the splendor, the cultures, the beauty. God did not create automatons. He did not make the world gray, but rather rich in color and depth of color. It is something to be enjoyed and experienced. At home, we can provide this in context of our values, and this is a good thing. It is also a good thing to experience something in its own context to truly understand it, because we are not just observers, but embracers of God's beauty and diversity. We must not simply say "Oh what a nice thought or how interesting" but we must truly value others and their perspectives and their cultures.

Anyways, I'll stop getting all philosophical now. *ahem*. In case anyone is still with me...

For the second part, we gathered at my best friend S's house. She is Korean, and hasn't lived long in the US. So she grew up celebrating the New Year; even until recently. I felt very honored to be included in her traditions! She taught us about the holiday from the Korean perspective, and what they do for the New Year. She made traditional festival food, and also showed us how to make gimbap (also sometimes called kimbap), which is Korean style sushi. Apparently, gimbap is not a traditional festival food, but the kids sure had fun!



She showed us how to lay the seaweed out, put the rice and other middle stuff on, and roll it nicely!



We were joined by another dear friend (who is originally from Taiwan) and her daughter. She brought her calligraphy brushes and showed us how to make a Chinese character. She also brought traditional foods from her Chinese background, and shared with us about the meanings behind some of the traditions. I brought potstickers. I had read that dumplings were traditional New Year's food, and she confirmed it. The shape of a dumpling is meant to evoke money, as the currency used to be nuggets of precious metals. Like oranges, whose names sound like "wealth" or "luck" and that's why they are New Year's food; wealth and luck are themes of every New Year, as that is what we wish for each other.





I brought a craft as well. I came up with it after I googled crafts for the Chinese New Year, and came across one for making bracelets out of glitter glue and craft foam. Apparently, in China it is customary for children to receive new clothes, so it was supposed to represent that. I didn't really like the idea of a foam bracelet. So I decided to gather my yarn, floss and cord supplies instead and have the girls braid friendship bracelets out of gold and red strings.



Then, since it is Year of the Rabbit, we made little bunnies out of felt, puffballs and googly eyes and attached them to the bracelets. They turned out pretty cute!



All in all, it was a fun and fascinating party. I'm very lucky that I get to be a part of such a vibrant global community, and that my own little slice of life is enriched by so many different cultures, backgrounds and ideologies. I was very honored and grateful to be included in my friends' festivities!