My dear friends,
What would you think if I innocently & enthusiastically acclaimed: "Wow, so you also celebrate the American Christmas! That's interesting!"
Of course you wouldn't find it very interesting that someone think your country celebrates an "American" Christmas!
For the first time you may find it a bit funny for my poor knowledge, thus you may explain briefly that there's no "American-", or "Italian-", or "whatever-" Christmas but Christmas only, as it is.
The second time you heard the sentence though, you'd be annoyed at the stupid person who seemed to come from nowhere on this Earth.
And from the third time, I guess you'd find yourself angry to keep explaining to all these no-brainers that Christmas is Christmas, it is to celebrate the birth of The King Jesus Christ, and it does not need whatever country to act as the prefix.
Well I understand you, fully. As it is pretty the same feeling when I explain to you guys about our New Year's Day - Spring Festival.
In Vietnam, China, South Korea, North Korea, Mongolia, Taiwan (depending on whether you consider Taiwan independent or a part China, but please don't argue about that here) and the pre-1873 Japan, we all celebrate the New Year's Day based on the movement of the Moon. For the reason we call it Lunar New Year. More accurately, our Lunar calendar is also fine-turned by the movement of the Sun, but we all call it just Lunar calendar. The beginning of the Lunar calendar marks the arrival of Spring, thus you can call the event the Spring Festival as well.
Many of you call the event Chinese New Year, that's REALLY annoying! It may not originally came from our homelands the same way Christmas didn't originate in your countries.
We believe when you say that, you're simply ignorance. For the same reason you think that everyone with black hair, yellow skin, black eyes Chinese even though he/she may well come from Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Korea, etc.
You can be even more confused because almost all Chinese people you know (quite many we guess) call the event Chinese New Year, too. It's simply because those people want to distinguish between their New Year and the Gregorian calendar New Year, and they, like you, do not know that the same event is celebrated in other countries. This happens to most of my Chinese friends.
A Korean friend told me that she was so troubled with the Western friends' confusion that she explained to them that in Korea, her people call it Korean New Year. "How patriotic but wrong" - I said.
Well, to this route there will be Vietnamese New Year, Mongolian New Year, etc, to be added to the collection of just one element. And that could lead to a pointless verbal war which would be bad as we are to the most important holiday of the year. It's time for celebration!!!
So please my dear friends, please show your respect to your Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Mongolian, Taiwanese friends by calling the event as it is. And it is Lunar New Year - Spring Festival.
I know that in some Arabic/Islamic countries, people also use a version of Lunar calendar but their calendar is purely based on the movement of the Moon, not adjusted by the movement of the Sun like ours. Luckily even though they do have the 1st day of the Lunar calendar of course, it's not important to them and they wouldn't argue to get the special name of Lunar New Year.
So please, please call it right, call it "Lunar New Year", or "Spring Festival".
Please spread these words to those you know, too.
Thank you.
Binh Nguyen
thienhadebetanhhung
http://ghicheptanman.blogspot.com/2010/02/lunar-new-year-spring-festival-is.html
