🐰Lunar New Year 2023🐱

January 23, 2023

2023 is the Year of the Rabbit!
And Cat (for our Vietnamese friends)!

Lunar New Year celebrates another new year based on the traditional lunisolar calendar - which is based on moon cycles - and the start of spring. Because the Lunar New Year is based on moon cycles, it falls on a different date on the Gregorian calendar each year.

How do people of Asian heritage celebrate it? Well our friends from Little Egg Crafts (Nozomi Tolworthy 雷希望) and Amy Phung 馮金薇 of besea.n wrote a great guide here.

As for me, well there's a lot of traditions I did growing up, but my faves involve getting lai see 利是 aka red packets, because what kid - okay even now, as a single adult - doesn't like money so we can buy whatever we want? When you get lai see you have to say greetings aka 揮春 fai ceon, in fact you say these greetings anyway when you see relatives and others during this festive time.

Here's five Cantonese greetings you can say during Lunar New Year. Be sure to check the posts on our Instagram for further context and my thoughts and feelings on the phrases.