สำนักราชบัณฑิตยสภา

123 ประพิ ณ มโนมั ยวิ บูลย์ วารสารราชบัณฑิตยสถาน ปีที่ ๓๗ ฉบับที่ ๒ เม.ย.-มิ.ย. ๒๕๕๕ Abstract Chainese New Year Prapin Manomaivibool Associate Fellow of the Academy of Arts, The Royal Institute, Thailand Chinese New Year (Chūn Jié), the most important Chinese festival is on the 1 st day of the first month of the Chinese lunar calendar. Generally, it falls on the later part of January, but it might be in February if the passing year is a leap year having 13 months in the Chinese calendar. Traditionally, Chinese New Year starts from the day of worshipping the God of Stove (jì zào) which is 7 days before Chinese New Year. After the worship, every household begins to make preparations for New Year celebration: cleaning the whole house (sǎochén), purchasing the drawing of gods, New Year pictures (niánhuà) and couplets (chūnlián), including foodstuffs for cooking the family reunion dinner on Chinese New Year’s Eve (niányèfàn). All dishes for this dinner carry some symbolic auspicious meaning. In this evening, the paternal grandparents and the parents will give their grandchildren and children the hóngbāo. On New Year’s day, people go to pay a New Year call (bàinián) to their senior relatives. Certain words such as broken, falling down, finished, etc. are taboos on New Year’s day. Traditionally, Chinese New Year Festival ends on the Yuánxiāo day which is the first full moon of the year. In the evening of Yuánxiāo, every family will have the sweet dumplings (tāngyuán) and adorn their houses with beautiful red lanterns to celebrate the final night of New Year Festival. Therefore, Yuánxiāo is also called the Lantern Festival (Dēng Jié). Keywords: Chinese New Year, Lantern Festival, God of Stove