One MCS ¢
CAC Highlights
The Rev Nathanael Goh Jun Chuen serves as Assistant Pastor at Sengkang Methodist Church / Photo of the Rev Goh courtesy of the Chinese Annual Conference
Celebrating Chinese New Year
as a Christian
The Rev Nathanael Goh
C
hinese New Year (CNY), also known as the Lunar New Year or the Spring Festival, is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. The date of Chinese New Year is determined by the Chinese calendar, based on a combination of lunar and solar movements. This is why CNY falls on a different date each year. This year, it falls on 12 Feb 2021. It starts on the first day of the new year containing a new moon and ends on the Lantern Festival fourteen days later. Chinese New Year’s Eve and Chinese New Year’s Day are celebrated as a family affair, a time of reunion and thanksgiving. The celebration was traditionally highlighted with a religious ceremony given in honour of Heaven and Earth, the gods of the household and the family ancestors. However, Christians can also rightly identify with many of the themes of the CNY celebration and honour God!
The family The Chinese New Year celebrations typically include the extended family. The extended family provides the basis
4
|
METHODIST MESSAGE FEBRUARY 2021
for the flourishing of each individual member and for each discrete family unit. The strength of the family lies in its ability to bind the family through good and bad times. Our celebrations this year will be muted by not being able to welcome more than eight visitors a day to our homes at a time due to COVID-19 government restrictions. Yet, just as each celebration of Holy Communion is a picture of God’s final banquet where a whole assortment of seekers, sinners and disciples can gather to eat and be with Jesus forever, so too can our smaller Chinese New Year celebrations be joyful symbols of our larger unity.
Spring cleaning The annual spring-cleaning can also serve as a time for spiritual stocktaking. Where are we going? Is there anything in our lives that needs cleansing? With regards to the kingdom of God, are our hearts ready to meet the New Year? We should approach the New Year with a quiet humility based on Christ’s atonement and justifying grace (Rom 3:23–26).
