Chinese New Year is biggest, but not only, lunar celebration
The shops of Philadelphia's Chinatown have been busy this week, selling red envelopes for the good-luck money that families present to loved ones. Neighborhood banks are exchanging old bills for new, because crisp, clean cash is considered more polite.
Traditional lion dancers have hauled their costumes from storage. Revelers raring to rock have stockpiled firecrackers to drive away evil spirits.
Signs of Chinese New Year 2017, which begins Saturday, abound in this central Philadelphia neighborhood. One of the holiday's most popular events starts around midnight Friday with a drum-driven lion dance near 10th and Race Streets.
"Chinese New Year is the most visible of the Lunar New Year celebrations. But it is only one of many," said John Chin, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp. and chair of the Mayor's Commission for Asian American Affairs, which this year has added promotional materials headlined "Chinese New Year and Beyond."
More than 20 countries, "from the Far East to the Middle East," celebrate some form of lunar new year during one or another season, said Chin.
Like Chinese, Vietnamese and Koreans venerate the first new moon after the winter solstice. But Cambodians, for example, will celebrate Khmer New Year in April, as will Laotians, who celebrate their new year, Pi Mai.
While national customs and traditions vary, this much is common: The lunar new year is a time to honor deities, ancestors, and elders; to renew family ties; and to feast.
Saturday will be celebrated by Vietnamese as Tet Nguyen Dan, which means "feast of the first morning of the first day," and by Koreans as Seollal, with its tradition of a full-moon bonfire to ward off bad spirits.
"If people want to experience true Chinese culture, they have to come to Chinatown at this time of year," said Chin. "But Asian Americans have been trying to have [native-born] Americans embrace the diversity of Asians. To do that, we need to celebrate each [ethnicity's] New Year in a unique way."
Tet "is a tradition I like to keep for our ancestors," said Huyen Trinh, a congregant of St. Helena Church near Olney, which the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has designated a Vietnamese worship center. Several hundred of its parishioners are from Vietnam; a weekly Sunday Mass is conducted in their native language.
During Tet, said Trinh, it is traditional for "children to wish older people longevity," and for the grateful "elders to give them little envelopes" stuffed with cash.
Her brother, Msgr. Joseph Trinh, who was traveling this week and unavailable for comment, is pastor of St. Helena. He came to the United States after the Vietnam War ended in 1975 -- a "boat person," said his sister. She and her mother followed some years later.
Around 1992, when Msgr. Trinh was a newly ordained priest, he wanted to respond to the city's growing population of Vietnamese with a Tet celebration, and funded it through church raffles and games. By the late 1990s the annual event had outgrown the church and had to move to the big cafeteria of Cardinal Dougherty High School, and after Dougherty closed in 2010, to the charter school that replaced it.
"We usually fill the place with about 2,000 people," said Huyen Trinh.
This year's Tet celebration is scheduled for Feb. 12 at Aspira, 6301 N. Second St., with a 9:30 a.m. Mass, followed by singers and musicians.
City Councilman David Oh, a Korean American, said many Koreans celebrate on the Gregorian calendar New Year on Jan. 1, and again on the lunar new year.
In his family, he said, everyone looks forward to playing yut nori, a traditional New Year's board game. "We play it with whoever is coming over for dinner," he said. "It's how we bring in the New Year."
Koreans steeped in their lunar new year traditions always make sure to down a bowl of tukkuk, a rice-cake porridge.
"If you don't eat the tukkuk," said Bishop Peter Hwang of the First Korean Baptist Church of Philadelphia in Upper Darby, "you don't get another year older."