Chinese New Year is the most important festival to the ethnic Chinese in Singapore. It is like no other festivals as people will not hesitate to spend an entire month's salary on preparing for this very important day.

New Year preparation can start as early as months ahead of the actual day.This date is determined by the lunar calender and it usually falls in January or February. For 2007, it falls on 18 Feb and it's a 2 weeks celebration that will end on 4 March.

Preparation
As part of the preparation, every household would be busy spring cleaning their houses as they believe a thorough cleaning of the house will sweep away any bad luck accumulated in the past year and have the house ready to receive new luck for the year as the day arrives.

A common decoration in the Chinese houses are red papercuts on walls or windows and potted plants of small oranges (symbolise 'Blessing') and flowers (spring). Some would hang an inverted red 'Fu' (Chinese Character which means 'Blessing') on their main door or living room to symbolise 'Blessing has come from heaven into my house'.

Other preparation involves stocking up new year goodies like nuts, sweets, tarts, cookies, preserved dried fruit and BBQ pork.

The supermarkets will be exceptionally busy during this period as people continue their Chinese New Year right up to the eve of New year. On the eve itself, many of the wet markets will be opened through the night till the early morning. The place to be at if you want to soak up the new year atmosphere would be Chinatown where scores of people will be there doing their new year shopping.

Chinese New Year Activities and Celebration
An important tradition on New Year's Eve is for families to gather together and spend the evening having sumptuous meal together called the 'reunion dinner'. They will also toss raw fish Yu Sheng to usher in the blessing for the new year.

The first and second day of of the Chinese new year are Singapore's public holidays. Visitation to relatives and friends will mostly be done on these days.

When visiting people, it is a practice for each family to bring along 2 mandarin oranges as a symbol of bringing good luck to the family whom they are visiting (Mandarin Oranges in Chinese sounds like 'Good Luck'). The host will in return swap the oranges with theirs to 'reciprocate good luck' to the visitors.

For the married, they will also need to give red packet (containing money of even sum eg. $2, $4, $10 etc) to the children to bless them with whatever words of blessing they utter when the red packets are handed out.

People are not suppose to sweep the floor on the first few days of New year so as not to sweep away good luck.

The Seventh Day of the New Year is 'Ren' day which mean's "everybody’s birthday" as everyone was considered one year older as of that date. Noodles are eaten to promote longevity and raw fish Yu Sheng for success.

On the eighth day, the Hokkien people have another family reunion dinner, and at midnight they pray to Tian Gong, the God of Heaven.

There will be numberous lion dances, fireworks, firecrackers and other new year activities going on throughout the first two weeks of the New year. Lion dance troops are invited by businesses to perform lion dance at their shops/ places of business to ward off evil and bad luck and to usher in a prosperous new beginning.

Falling on the 15th day of the first month of the Lunar Year, the Lantern Festival takes place under a full moon, and marks the end of Chinese New Year.

For visitors who are planing to visit Singapore, please avoid being here on the 1st and 2nd day of Chinese New Year. As most shops will be closed and taxis are difficult to find during these two days as everybody is on holiday

Priscilla Tan
www.family-fun-singapore.com