After the sparkly dust of Christmas has settled and the seemingly endless cold, grey winter days have set in, I’ve always found solace in the fact that Lunar New Year is just around the corner. The date changes every year because it’s set by the lunar calendar, but typically it falls in late January or early February. As a child, one of my greatest pleasures was waking up on Lunar New Year to open the lucky money red envelopes that my mother had lovingly tucked under my pillow the night before — the Chinese superstition is that doing so will ward off evil and bring good luck for the new year.
Lucky money red envelopes are to Lunar New Year what presents are to Christmas — as a kid, they were the focal point for me (I’d gleefully count up all the cash I’d received from my elders at the end of the day, daydreaming of all the ways I could use it), but as the years have gone on they’ve become just the cherry on top of a joyful day with my family.
For me, the holiday has always had a deeply magical quality to it, probably because so many of the traditions are rooted in superstition. The celebration is loaded with traditions meant to usher in good luck — some of which my family follow dutifully (like married people giving unmarried people lucky money red envelopes, getting our haircut and cleaning the house beforehand), and some of which we ignore in favour of practicality (like not bathing or using knives on Lunar New Year).
In years when my grandmother was in good health, she was always at the focal point of our celebrations, wearing one of her signature bright red outfits for good luck and playfully hiding lucky money red envelopes around her house for us to find. We’d gather over her dazzling feasts: the table loaded with lucky foods like “long-life” yi-mein noodles with tender braised beef and soy eggs, handmade dumplings with Worcestershire sauce for dipping, crispy-fried spring rolls, whole steamed fish, and my favourite, squishy stir-fried nian gao rice cakes, a Lunar New Year specialty.
Games of luck were an essential component to our celebrations: Whoever could pull the longest noodle, find the lucky money red envelope with the most cash, or lift out all the fish bones in one deft motion would always be declared the luckiest of all. Being born and raised in Canada, as a kid I could never distinguish between what was rooted in real Chinese tradition and what was my family’s own mystical creation, but I loved all of it all the same.
As my grandmother’s energy for cooking faded over the years, our feasts became a more communal affair. Instead of wrapping dumplings before we arrived, my grandmother would assemble the ingredients and have us wrap them together, always resulting in a competition over who could wrap the best dumpling (bonus points for good crimping and plumpness). This potluck-style celebration resulted in a mishmash of Chinese and Western foods that accurately reflected our Chinese-Canadian family: You’d often find a pepperoni pizza and a Costco Caesar salad alongside the freshly steamed dumplings and fried spring rolls.
One particularly memorable year, my mischievous younger cousin had the bright idea to stuff a pepperoni into a dumpling and declare that whoever got that dumpling would be the luckiest of all. The pepperoni dumpling went mostly forgotten until the next day, when I tucked into my steaming leftover dumpling lunch and discovered the pepperoni in my first bite. I was both horrified at the flavour combination and thrilled at my good luck.
As the years have gone on, I’ve realized that the Lunar New Year magic I’ve always felt has a lot more to do with my family’s love and care for each other than anything else. The games of luck we’ve invented bring us together and give us hope for a prosperous new year, and the luck we feel in the food we eat stems from being together in the moment and sharing something truly delicious.
This year marks my first Lunar New Year as a married woman, which is significant (and only a little bittersweet) because it means I now have to give lucky money red envelopes instead of receiving them. Although I’ll miss gleefully counting up my cash, I’ll be gleefully doling it out to my loved ones, and I can’t wait to be a part of creating that magic.
