Chinese New Years---Tet---Lunar New Years---Spring Festival

Fireworks & Decorations for Lunar New Year

These are all the same holiday.  The different names are given by the area where the feast is celebrated.  All of the countries where this spring event is an important festivity are places that are Chinese or have significant Chinese influence.  Incidentally, the lunar new years term is not exactly correct.  Lunar refers to the Moon.  You know, lunatics are people who go nutso during the full moon and all of that folklore.  This holiday is celebrated by referring to a calendar that tracks both the sun and the moon.  Correctly it should be call a lunisolar or solalunar holiday.  (No one really uses solalunar but there are some people who insist on being one up intellectually who use lunisolar to describe the event.)

The holiday and its traditions differ based on the location and local custom.  In the USA there are some celebrations in cities with major Chinese, Korean or south Asian populations but the closest most Americans get to the holiday is when they receive a letter with a New Year’s stamp.  The stamps from the US Postal Service  bear the symbol of the animal whose new year is being celebrated.  The twelve animals that are honored by having a whole year named in their honor are the ones who took the challenge given by the Chinese Gods who promised to name the twelve years in the lunar cycle for the first twelve animals to swim across a river.  The order of the years were based on how the animals finished the swim. 

The rat figured that it was a very long way for such a small animal and he told the cat that they both could get across if they rode the ox’s back and help the ox with his notoriously bad vision find his way to the other side.  Both the cat and rat jumped on the ox’s broad back and with urging and guidance the trio was at the head of the pack.  When the ox and his passengers got close to the shore, the rat, being what Jimmy Cagney would call “A dirty rat”,  pushed the cat off the ox’s back and took a running jump off the ox’s back to be the first animal to finish.  The cat almost drowned and did not make the top twelve so from that moment on cats chase and kill rats.