Gong hei fat choi!!!

Happy Lunar New Year!

Does your family do anything to celebrate?
Sorry, did I confuse you? Yes, I'm wonder bread (White) over here. Actually, the side of the family I feel the most influence from is the beans & rice (Mexican/Spanish) but no, no Chinese in my background. I'll explain:

I grew up in a predominantly "Asian" area; Philippine, Vietnamese, Chinese & Japanese. I guess it might be more accurate to say I grew up in a very diverse area, but the Asian cultures were quite dominate in my schools. This was a big holiday growing up for us. We usually celebrated w/a traditional lion dance or dragon parade at school. But the best part was the food!!! We always had lumpia (Philippine egg rolls), pork baus (sweet bread stuffed w/sweet & sour pork) and pho (Vietnamese soup). YUM!!!

Night before last hubby took the girls to pick up Chinese take out. Big Speak comes home yakking away about the outing; "We went this store that had a waving cat in the window." (Funny, the things they note. I don't even notice those anymore.) "And then I told the lady Happy New Year in Chinese, and she started to talk to me in Chinese." I asked her if she understood her and she said no, but I wouldn't be surprised if Littlespeak did. (Those toddlers get so much from our non verbals it's like they speak all languages.) I then explained to her about Mandarin language and Cantonese and that they're both Chinese, but most likely the lady spoke to her in Mandarin. She thought that was cool, "how come we don't have two languages?" They're having a big "Chinese New Year" parade & celebration at her school on Thursday, so she's been preparing for this week. I explained to her that it's really Lunar New Year and why (the moon cycle, and not just the Chinese celebrate it. I've actually been in Korea during it. Trust me, they celebrate.) And she got really excited about that. She's super happy to go "tell" her teacher something new. Then I promised to get some Chinese food, as well as Vietnamese, Koren, and Philippine to celebrate (looks like I'll be making a trip to the Ranch 99 this week).

So again; does your family celebrate? How?
Do you celebrate some not so common (for America) holidays? How?