Tradition is not memory.
It is choice.
It is stewardship.
It is the quiet decision to honour what shaped you.
And this year, I chose to honour it fully in our own way.
This is a fifteen-day festival that formally welcomes in the turning of the season — spring renewal after winter rest. Each day carries its own significance, like stepping-stones across a threshold.
Because my work once had me living an itinerant life across the world, I never formed a home community to celebrate Lunar New Year in the way I grew up knowing it. So in truth, I never built the tradition in my own home.
Now this is truly home — and my parents are gone — Kim and I decided to make an acknowledgement of Lunar New Year in our own way. Quietly. Sincerely. And with heart.
On an auspicious day before New Year, we began by hanging up our chosen New Year blessings (挥春, huīchūn) – lanterns 🏮.
Any the pièce de résistance! – I even dared myself to assemble a flat-pack lantern — and found myself studying the picture of the completed lantern like a riddle, trying to work out which piece should be separated first… with the most trepidation being: don’t cut apart what must stay joined! No glue. Just patience, puzzle-mind, and faith. 😅
(And yes — I can only imagine Kim trying to do this!)
Then we had our own special reunion dinner 🍲🥢 — and I cooked a delicious spread of Chinese dishes to mark the occasion.
Then we spent the rest of the evening sitting on our verandah, the lanterns gently swaying in the wind, watching dusk surrender to night.
No fireworks.
No drums.
No crowded tables.
Just two people, a quiet sky, and the soft glow of intention.
And in that stillness, I realised — tradition does not need spectacle to endure. It needs presence. It needs reverence. It needs someone willing to pause long enough to honour the turning.
This year, that was us.
✨ And when we honour it, we keep the world beautifully, gloriously alive. ✨ Master Boon 🌈💜
