Lunar new year will be a Boar

When the lunar new year comes, as it does today, so, too, arrive the lions, dragons and lucky money.

Several, but not all, Asian cultures celebrate the holiday, which marks the first day of the lunar year and is often known as the Chinese New Year. This year’s turning ushers in the Year of the Boar (or pig). Anyone born in the coming lunar year, according to Chinese astrology, will have the sign’s traits – including honesty, loyalty and amiability.

The Chinese, Taiwanese, Koreans and Vietnamese – along with the Tibetans and Mongolians – observe Lunar New Year. There are time-honored foods to be eaten, decorations to be hung, ancient rites to be observed.

It is a time for communities around the world to reunite with family and invoke long-held superstitions in hopes of gaining prosperity, luck and longevity.

“The New Year is like Christmas,” explains the Rev. Ngoc Ha, who pastors the Vietnamese congregation at Immanuel Baptist Church in Nashville, Tenn. “It’s a big holiday for the nation.” (In Vietnam, the holiday is known as Tet.)

Lunar New Year grew out of agricultural beginnings. Its arrival heralded the end of winter and the coming of spring. The day is often regarded as a communal birthday, as well.

“At the New Year, everyone’s a year older,” Ha says.

Families have much to do before the big day arrives. People begin making their way back to the family home. Unfinished business and debts get settled. Around their doors, the Chinese and Taiwanese hang red scrolls – the color of life and vitality – scrawled with hopeful messages. They scurrilously clean house, along with the burial plots of their deceased.

Cleaning is taboo in the first few days of the new year, for fear of sweeping away good luck.

It’s customary to pay your respects to your ancestors. Many families have an altar in their homes for such a purpose. They set bowls of food on the altars as offerings and light incense and burn ceremonial money as a way to communicate with and appease the dead. They ask the spirits to bless and watch over the family in the coming year.

Taiwanese and Chinese families prepare sweets for the Kitchen God, hoping he’ll have sweet things to say about them – or that his mouth will be too full to speak – when he reports to the Jade Emperor in heaven.

Korean families often spend New Year’s flying kites, spinning tops and playing a traditional board game using four dowels. The sticks are thrown in the air, and the way they fall determines how players can move on a board. The first one around the board wins.

In China and Taiwan, the lunar new year festival lasts 15 days, although typically people return to work after four or five days.

Throughout that time businesses often call upon lion and dragon dance teams to perform. The mythical creatures are considered auspicious. They often dance to the explosive whirl and pop of firecrackers, since the loud noises are thought to scare away evil spirits.

The moon and its cycles determine the lunar year. The time system used by the United States and many other countries, the Gregorian calendar, is based on a solar year.

Lunar New Year’s Day falls between about Jan. 21 and Feb. 20, on the second new moon after the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. A new moon – when it is completely absent from view – marks the beginning of a lunar month. A lunar month lasts 29 or 30 days and there are 12 months in a lunar year. An extra month is added at certain times to keep the lunar year relatively aligned with the solar year.

The Chinese officially dispensed with the lunar calendar in favor of the western world’s Gregorian calendar in the early 1900s. Nevertheless, the moon-based system, along with many of the festivals tied to it, endured.