Do not touch a broom and you must wear red today...

Today marks the first day of the Chinese New Year and today is the entry of the Year of Rat in Chinese zodiac calendar. To the Chinese who celebrate Chinese New Year, luck is everything. Do things right today, and your year will be filled with fortune, prosperity and money.

Days prior to this Chinese New Year, you must decorate the doors and windows with paper-cuts and couplets with the very popular theme of happiness, wealth, longevity and satisfactory marriage with more children. You must thoroughly clean the house to cast away all ill fortune. You must also paint your window and door panes red to attract good fortune.

You must also offering sacrifice to the Kitchen God who is considered to be the guardian of the family hearth. He is the God sent from heaven to take charge of family affairs and who prepares a report on the past deeds of the family to report the same to Heaven and thus needs to be kept in good humor. The sacrifice to this Kitchen God consists of a lotus root-like sticky cake call "Nian Gao" which is made of a kind of confection, a typical Chinese traditional candy. This candy serves the dual purpose of appeasing the appetite of the Kitchen God as well as sticking his mouth so as to prevent him from speaking ill about the family.

On Chinese New Year Eve, supper is a feast, with all members coming together. One of the most popular course is dumplings boiled in water called "Jiaozi" which literally mean "sleep together and have sons", a long-lost good wish for a family. After dinner, it is time for the whole family to sit up for the night while having fun together. Every light is supposed to be kept on the whole night. At midnight, the whole sky will be lit up by fireworks and firecrackers.

During the Chinese New Year, there are some customs that the Chinese observed:-

• Do not use a broom because it will sweep your good luck away
• No swearing and most definitely no violence, or else you'll get everything back a hundredfold over the year
• You must wear red today because it will bring you good luck. Even better, wear red underwear!
• Anyone who breaks a dish on this day must quickly say "Peace for all time," to avoid incurring misfortune
• Say greetings from door to door, first to their relatives and then to their neighbours. This is a great way to reconcile forgetting all old grudges
• The colours black and white are avoided during this time as they represent mourning
• Gold colour stands for wealth

Besides this, every traditional Chinese home also has the custom of keeping live blooming plants to symbolize rebirth and new growth. There is also the tradition of welcoming guests with sweet treats and that has led to the evolution of serving a circular tray of colourful candies which is compartmentalized into eight slots to display the same. This ensures that all witness a sweet beginning.

Children, younger people and unmarried people are given bright red packets packed with varying amounts of money by their relatives and family. Apart from that, red packets are also given out by employers to staff and even shops to customers. Also for the next few days during Chinese New year is where we Chinese go into a frenzy of present giving and visiting each other. So the atmosphere is always filled with warmth, joy and togetherness.

If only I can be part of this right now...sigh...