The Holiday You May Not Know About

Happy Chinese New Year!

Chinese New Year is quickly approaching. New Year's Eve falls on February 18th this year and begins the year of the goat. 

Traditional Chinese celebrate the new year based on the lunar calendar rather than the solar calendar. 

For Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritius, and the Philippines, this is the most important holiday celebration of the year. 

The holiday is filled with meaningful traditions, history and rituals, many of them foreign to us in the west. 

I wonder if you have any Asian friends who will be missing their traditional celebrations this year. Imagine living in a foreign country where no one celebrated Christmas or Thanksgiving or if you were separated from your family and were unable to return home to share the traditional family meal or exchange gifts and catch up face to face. This is what some of your Asian friends may feel. 

You might consider inviting them to join you for dinner on Thursday evening (especially at a Chinese or Asian restaurant) and asking them to share with you their family and cultural traditions. 

Our family is excited that my parents are going to come from Dallas and spend this Chinese New Year here in Taiwan with us. As you read this, they'll be on the plane headed our way. It's their first trip to Asia! We have an exciting week planned for them and they are going to get to experience some really wonderful cultural events while they are here. But most of all, we're going to get to share what we have missed the most while away. Just being together. 

I hope you have a great week and take advantage of this opportunity to get to know your Asian friends, neighbors and co-workers a little better through learning about their cultural heritage. 

Thanks again for your prayers and support. I'll save some of the other exciting things going on for our next update. There are plenty!!!

Todd & Crista
Katelyn, Ashlyn & Andrew