#Lunar new year lanterns full

The Lantern Festival ( traditional Chinese: 元宵節 simplified Chinese: 元宵节 pinyin: Yuánxiāo jié), also called Shangyuan Festival ( traditional Chinese: 上元節 simplified Chinese: 上元节 pinyin: Shàngyuán jié), is a Chinese traditional festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunisolar Chinese calendar, during the full moon. Statues of mother and daughter celebrating the Lantern Festival. Magha Puja (in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos)

Yuánxiāo jié ( 元宵節) / Shàngyuán jié ( 上元節)Ĭhotrul Duchen (in Tibet Province of China) Today, perhaps, that is the only thing that really matters.Lantern Festival celebrated in Tainan at night And it attracted a lot of people who shot photos and posted them on Instagram. And rather than call it Lunar New Year, the cultural center deemed it “Chinese New Year,” thus leaving out all of the other Asian groups that celebrate the same calendar. It happened at Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island, where “lanterns” went up throughout the months of November and December, somehow simultaneously honoring the Asian Lunar New Year (meant to celebrate spring) in the dark days leading to the winter solstice. Last year New York turned the Lunar Lantern Festival into a way to celebrate Christmas. The streets are too narrow and the parade is in the daytime. Don’t expect giant floats in New York, however. Chinatown in Manhattan, as can be imagined, has the most important Lunar New Year parade. The Year of the Pig indicates wealth, prosperity and good fortune. There are as many ways of celebrating the first full moon of the Year of the Pig as can be imagined. New York City has five boroughs, three of which - Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens - have large Asian communities. Philadelphia has a lively lantern parade. One is a do-it-yourself floating lantern event.

Los Angeles has so many different Asian communities it has multiple festivals. If possible, plan to be somewhere to see a parade or participate in festivities. Or by the Chinese calendar, the years 47. The Lantern Festival is Februand February 8, 2020. Red lanterns are hung everywhere, with riddles on the side, but the floats, and fireworks, often have as their subject the much longed-for coming of spring and spring flowers, birds, dragons and fish. What started with monks honoring Buddha with simple paper red lanterns lighted with candles has, since the advent of LEDs and Asian economic success, morphed into something that in Taiwan challenges the Rose Bowl parade. All across Asia, and indeed anywhere in the world where there are Asian communities, there are Lantern Festivals and parades of lanterns. For Lunar New Year, however, it is also good.Īlthough the formal holiday ends after a week or so, 12 days later there is another festival that marks the end to this holiday season, the first full moon, and the occasion for the Lantern Festival. And just like Thanksgiving, food is plentiful. Flowers are often fake, especially peach blossoms. Opening it is bad luck, so the money is only symbolic, which, when you think of it, is true of real money too. Major rail transportation is excellent for the first few hundred miles, but for millions of travelers – the population is 1.3 billion – the last part involves buses, taxis, bicycles and walking.īecause it is a family holiday, like Thanksgiving, few outsiders see the traditions, one of which is a red envelop with money inside. Houses are decked out in red and gold, flowers are set out – the holiday celebrates spring, and even if spring has not yet arrived, fake flowers are plentiful and cyclamen is reliable – and millions of people move from industrialized cities back to rural area. When it comes time for the annual Lunar New Year, or Golden Festival, or Spring Festival, however the People’s Republic of China defines it, the event encompasses not only that actual date of the New Year, February 5, but weeks of travel before and after, and some time in between, to see relatives. China is slightly smaller than the entire United States, but has the largest population of any country on earth.

Lunar new year lanterns