Friday, January 19, 2007

The Legends of The Lunar New Year

There are some legends about Lunar New Year. It was told by generations to generations. They tell us how and why people celebrate Lunar New Year.



thousands years ago, there was a cruel lion-like monster called 'Nien'. It would go outside and eat human during the night at the end of the winter; therefore, some people get together to do something all night long to get rid of the monster: lit the fire torch, displayed the bright red color, made a lot of loud sound; some people just hid till next day. If everything was going well, they would congrated one another for having a safe year. Once people knew the monster was afraid of fires, loud sounds and bright colors, they did the same things years after years so that it became a customs.



Lunar New Year is also called Spring Festival that it begins from 12/31 to 1/15. But it actually starts a week before New Year because people believe that gods will go back celestial city on 12/24 for reporting how people were doing during the year, so everyone worship gods with a lot of foods and paper money and put something sweet around the mouth of the god of kitchen so that he will not say anything bad to the king of gods. In the fourth day of the New Year, all gods return and keep monitoring how people behave. That means that the fun is over and the life go back normal. Thus, there are many activities in the temples to welcome gods coming back.



The fifth day is an opening day for many stores, companies, and factories. They hope the god of wealth will come often and bring them prosperity all year long. although the national holiday is over, the Spring Festival will not end until 1/15.

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