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The Chinese astrological calendar follows a twelve-year lunar cycle,
with each year named after an animal. Chinese New Year 2008, which
began yesterday, ushers in the Year of the Earth Rat.
According to the Chinese astrological calendar,
rat years are all about new beginnings and busy activity. It favors
those who work hard at practical matters, as well as those involved
in more spiritual activities. For those not involved in a
relationship, it will be good for new romance.
Here in the Philippines, the Chinese New Year
revelries, as well as the practice of traditions, are mostly seen in
Manila’s Binondo district.
For the people interviewed in small
Chinese-owned stores in Binondo, the response is quite the same on
expectations from the New Year: “We expect to have a new start and
to have more luck in our businesses as well as for our personal
lives.”
Old superstitions and taboos, according to the
Tsinoy traders, are still being observed to bring good luck and
avert bad ones all year.
The entire house should be cleaned before New
Year’s Day. On New Year’s Eve, all brooms and other cleaning
equipment are put away. Sweeping or dusting should not be done on
New Year’s Day for fear that good fortune will also be swept away.
After New Year’s Day, the floors may be swept.
Beginning at the door, the dust and rubbish are
swept to the middle of the parlor, then placed in the corners and
not taken or thrown out of the house until the fifth day. At no time
should the rubbish in the corners be trampled upon. In sweeping,
there is a superstition that if you sweep the dirt out over the
doorstep, you will sweep one member of the family members away. To
sweep the dust and dirt out of your house by the front entrance is
to sweep away the good fortune of the family; it must always be
swept inwards and then taken out at the back door. This is also
applied in business establishments.
All debts have to be paid by the time of the New
Year. Nothing should be borrowed on that day, as anyone who does so
will be borrowing all year.
Shooting off firecrackers on New Year’s Eve is
the Chinese way of sending out the old year and welcoming in the New
Year. It is a practice that even non-Chinese have adopted in
celebrating the New Year. On the stroke of midnight on New Year’s
Eve, every door in the house, and even windows, has to be opened to
allow the old year to go out.
Everyone should also refrain from using foul
language and bad or unlucky words.
-- Rommel C. Lontayao and
John Dominic P. Gaspacho
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