Happy Chinese Lunar New Year!

I’m a day late with this, but alas!

The Chinese New Year is actually a 15-day-long Spring Festival, with different traditions for each day. Scroll down here to see. Today is the day for married women to visit their parents, to pray to our ancestors, and be extra nice to dogs. I love cultures that rightly celebrate the birth of a new year as the renewal of Earth’s cycle and the heralding of the coming spring. In these winter doldrums, we need to be reminded that the slumbering natural world will soon reawaken.
Here’s a great story I found (okay, it’s also from Wikipedia) that explains how the years got assigned the 12 animals associated with them.

A legend explains the sequence in which the animals were assigned. Supposedly, the twelve animals fought over the precedence of the animals in the cycle of years in the calendar, so the Chinese gods held a contest to determine the order. All the animals lined up on the bank of a river and were given the task of getting to the opposite shore. Their order in the calendar would be set by the order in which the animals managed to reach the other side.

The cat wondered how he would get across if he was afraid of water. At the same time, the ox wondered how he would cross with his poor eyesight. The calculating rat suggested that he and the cat jump onto the ox's back and guide him across. The ox was steady and hard-working so that he did not notice a commotion on his back. In the meanwhile, the rat sneaked up behind the unsuspecting cat and shoved him into the water. Just as the ox came ashore, the rat jumped off and finished the race first. The lazy pig came to the far shore in twelfth place.

And so the rat got the first year named after him, the ox got the second year, and the pig ended up as the last year in the cycle. The cat finished too late to win any place in the calendar, and vowed to be the enemy of the rat forevermore.

Here are some traditional New Year paintings in the Yangliuqing style, named after its town of origin. It is customary to decorate the front door with prints such as these to send good wishes to friends.

Best wishes for the Year of the Ox!

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