Happy Year of the Snake! In case you missed my copious posts and tweets about it, yesterday was the Lunar New Year. Celebrations like these make me miss my extended family more. I remember big gatherings with my aunts, uncles, and cousins where we would stuff ourselves silly with delicious food and then play gambling games.
Our celebration yesterday was not as raucous as the ones I had as a child, but we had fun. The kids put on their Asian clothes. Sophia wore a traditional Vietnamese ao dai while Jaxson wore something a little more Chinese. Men also wear ao dai in Vietnamese culture but in more “masculine colors” like royal blue. I think most men don’t wear ao dai anymore except for very special occasions.
Jaxson totally cracked me up. He’s become more aware of Vietnamese things recently. He’ll ask me how to say certain words in Vietnamese when before this, he would correct me if I spoke to him in Vietnamese. It’s definitely good timing that we spent the weekend cleaning and reorganizing the kids’ room because I rediscovered some bilingual Vietnamese-English books that we can read together.
After he put on his outfit, he declared, “Now I’m Vietnamese!”
Once I stopped laughing, I told him, “It doesn’t matter what clothing you’re wearing, you’re still Vietnamese.”
That prompted a whole new round of questioning in which he asked each family member if he or she was also Vietnamese. I told him that his dad wasn’t Vietnamese until he married me.
After we got all dolled up, we headed to our favorite pho restaurant for lunch. Since yesterday was Sunday, I was finally able to order bun bo hue, which is a spicy hot beef noodle soup. My mouth was on fire but it was totally worth it! It was a good burn. Everyone else ate pho.
For dinner we ate traditional banh chung for good luck, and I gave the kids their lucky red packets.
It was a great way to start the new year!
How did you celebrate the Lunar New Year?