Chinese New Year

I already told you that my friend Steph throws the best parties. Well, she did it again for Chinese New Year! Along with her boys, she spent the week creating an amazing paper maché dragon and after telling the story behind the dragon dance, they performed it for us. Here's the story she told:

Long, long ago the people of China told of a legend of a vicious beast with a long head and a sharp horn called Nian which means year in Chinese. Nian lived deep in the ocean the whole year, but on every Chinese New Year he would climb on the shore to destroy villages and harm the people. One day the Jade Emperor told the village people that Nian does not like the colour red and loud noise. In addition he told the people to build a fierce dragon to chase Nian, the year away. On the night of Chinese New Year, the people hung red banners, made a lot of noise by banging pots an pans and brought out their fierce dragon. When Nian saw the dragon and heard the loud noise, he fled the village in fear. Once a year since this night, on New Year's Eve the people of China perform a dragon dance, decorate their houses with red and make loud noises to chase Nian away and bring good luck to everyone.

There were really cool crafts for the kids (a little drum that they used to "scare the dragon away" during the dance), amazing food, great people and the release of lanterns in the sky (I wanted to do that since I read about the lantern festival of Thailand and the girls asked about is since seing the movie Tangled).

 It was snowy and the snow made the paper lanterns wet, so it was a bit tricky, but most of the lanterns flew away in the night (they are ecological and decomposable), which means most of us will have good luck in the next year! (you have to make a wish when the lantern starts going up). It was magical!

And you know what? It's the year of the horse. It's my year.
And it's going to be a great one!