Lunar New Year. A holiday that celebrates the start of the new year based on the lunar calendar, celebrated to the same extent that American culture celebrates Christmas. This year is the first year I celebrate this momentous holiday away from my family. After I spent the past two weeks moping about and complaining to my parents about how sad I was to miss the traditions and celebrations, I began wondering why this mattered so much to me. Why was I making sure to not wear jeans with rips in them or eating some serving of fish for dinner? Why do people usually set off fireworks on the first night of the new year? Traditionally, jeans with rips symbolized a lack of wealth and eating fish was accompanied by a phrase that was a homonym for having a surplus of wealth and happiness. Also, the loud sounds that accompany fireworks are believed to prevent monsters and evil spirits from kidnapping children in their sleep. So, why are these small traditions so important to people when, as rational people, we can agree that they are all superstitions?
“LANTERN BOKEH” BY ANDREW HAIMERL
Here are a couple of my reasons:
- Humans are social animals who work in groups. This means that we are predisposed to sharing ideas and behaviors to feel like we belong. We engage in shared rituals and customs to create a tighter bond between us and other members of our community. It is much easier to follow the present customs than to go against the norms that everyone else in the community has accepted.
- There is a peace of mind associated with sticking to certain aspects of our history. Clearly, we know that setting off fireworks – as a folktale says – does not prevent our children from being kidnapped by devious monsters, but it is anxiety-reducing to continue in a superstition that was thought to keep us safe.
- The regularity of traditions brings about a predictability to our lives that we find comforting. All traditions follow a certain calendar, be it Christmas on the 25th of December or Chinese New Year on the first day of the lunar calendar, and the constancy of these special days is reassuring by keeping us grounded in an ever-changing world.
– YiLin Lee, APUG Sophomore