Chinese New Year is My Favorite Holiday!
Hi! My name is Xiaoming and I'm 10 years old. I live in Beijing, China with my mom, dad, little sister, and grandparents. My favorite time of the whole year is when we celebrate Chinese New Year!
Chinese New Year is the biggest and most important holiday in China. It's also called the Spring Festival because it signals the end of winter and the start of spring. The date changes every year based on the lunar calendar, but it's usually in late January or early February. This year it fell on January 22nd.
For Chinese New Year, we get two whole weeks off from school! The celebrations actually start on New Year's Eve and last for 15 days until the Lantern Festival. During this time, everybody is off work and school so we can travel, visit family, and have lots of fun!
The Eve Before
On New Year's Eve, my whole family gets together for a huge dinner called the Reunion Dinner. My grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all come over. We have all kinds of delicious foods like dumplings, noodles, fish, and sweet rice balls. Eating
fish is important because the Chinese word for fish sounds like the word for surplus. So we eat it to have extra money and good luck in the new year!
After dinner, kids like me get hung red envelopes with money inside called hongbao from our parents and
grandparents. We also set off a lot of firecrackers and fireworks at midnight to scare away any evil spirits and welcome the new year. Sometimes the fireworks are so loud they scare my dog! Decorations and Traditions
For the Spring Festival, we decorate our home with paper cutouts of the words \"Good Fortune\" and images of the animal of that year's zodiac sign. 2023 was the Year of the Rabbit, so we had lots of rabbit decorations. We also hang up red lanterns and scrolls with couplets or poems on them.
My mom always does a huge cleaning of our whole house before the new year because it's bad luck to start fresh with a dirty home. She says out with the old, in with the new! We also wear brand new clothes and shoes on New Year's Day for good luck.
One of my favorite traditions is watching the amazing Spring Festival Gala show on TV with my family on New Year's Eve. It has
singing, dancing, comedy skits, and performances that go on for hours! Everybody in China tunes in to watch this special program.
Family Time
The best part of Chinese New Year is spending quality time with my extended family. On New Year's Day, we visit my grandparents in the morning and greet them with the special New Year greeting \"Xin Nian Kuai Le\" which means \"Happy New Year!\" They always give me and my sister extra hongbao. Later, we go visit my aunts, uncles, and cousins while they come to our house too. Everybody brings little gifts like candy, snacks, or small toys. My grandpa cooks up a big feast again with foods like dumplings, chicken, and noodles which symbolize long life.
For the next two weeks until the Lantern Festival at the end, we just relax, play, eat lots of delicious food, and enjoy being together as a family. We watch special New Year TV shows, movies, and performances. We talk, laugh, play games and spend warm, quality time bonding. It's my most cherished time of year!
On the 15th day of the new year, we celebrate the Lantern Festival by watching parades with beautiful lanterns, eating sweet rice balls called tangyuan, and setting off the last firecrackers. Then it's back to school and work, but our fun New Year celebrations make the winter fly by!
Chinese New Year is filled with amazing food, family togetherness, beautiful decorations, fireworks, and rich traditions. I feel so lucky to celebrate this wonderful, festive, lucky holiday every year! I hope you can experience the fun of Chinese New Year sometime too. Xin Nian Kuai Le!
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