In the United States, we celebrate the New Year on December 31st and January 1st. We set off fireworks, gather with friends and family, and watch the famous Time Square broadcast from New York City while we count down to a new year. Did you know that some places also celebrate different dates as a new year?
In Taiwan and many other countries in Asia, the people also celebrate the Lunar New Year in addition to the festivities at the end of December. In fact, in Taiwan, the Lunar New Year (LNY) is a much bigger celebration! For starters, I still had school on December 31st and then had one day off on January 1st. That is so different from the United States, where schools, businesses, and practically every store shuts down for at least one of those days in celebration of the new year. On the other hand, LNY is so important that we had three weeks off of school!
This year, LNY was on January 29th but the celebration is much longer than one day. As soon as Christmas was over, all of the directions around the city switched very quickly to the LNY. There are twelve zodiac animals that the calendar cycles through. Each year is the next animal in the cycle. This past year was the year of the dragon and this year is the year of the snake! Also, the color red is said to be a very lucky color. Therefore, a lot of the decorations I saw were red and had many snakes.
