On Lunar New Year
when homesickness feels the most poignant & starting my own new year's tradition in America.
Since I moved to the U.S. in 2012 for education, celebrating Lunar New Year in the U.S. has always been bittersweet for me. It’s the time of the year when all families come together to celebrate the New Year. Yet, since I left home more than 10 years ago, Lunar New Year has also been the time when homesickness feels the most poignant and helpless for me.
Growing up, my Lunar New Year celebration was usually a multi-day, and sometimes a week-long event. Leading up to the New Year, adults would clean the house from the inside out, gift each other fruits and goodies, and plan the menu for the big feast. On New Year’s eve, my parents and my uncles would take turns hosting the dinner every year which usually consisted of 10-15 family members. Then we’d watch TV, snack, and count down to the New Year together. When it is midnight, we’d go outside and the adults would light firecrackers to celebrate the first day of the New Year. My grandmother, the most hardcore of us all, would play mahjong all night long with her friends until the crack of dawn and then go to the temple to burn incense to pray for the whole family. The following week would be visiting more distanced family members in the countryside, paying respect to our ancestors, and enjoying feasts after feasts. We’d gather again as a whole family on the 15th Day of the Lunar New Year to celebrate 元宵节， the Lantern Festival, to conclude the celebration.
During college, I never went back to China for the New Year’s celebration because the time coincides with the beginning of the spring semester. Although there were always Chinese students I knew at the time who were bold enough to skip one or two weeks of classes to spend their Lunar New Year in China. I always envied them, but I cared too much about the consequence of missing attendance at the time. Thus, my celebration had watered down to a dinner at the only not-so-Americanized Chinese restaurant in my small college town with other Chinese students, followed by a quick video chat with my family back home that had gathered together without me. The “holiday spirit” would then be quickly washed over by the upcoming dues and the busy class schedule.
Four years of college and two years of graduate school later, when I thought I could finally go home for a proper Lunar New Year’s dinner with my hard-earned vacation days, 2020 came around and the world shut down.