Time for a holiday

Because Malaysia is a multi-racial and multi-religious country, it celebrates the main cultural and religious festivals for each of the three main races, Muslim for the Malays, Buddhist for the Chinese and Hindu for the Indians. Then you throw in the international holidays of Christmas and New Year. Each of the Malaysian states has a holiday for the birthday of its ruler so you have a plethora of holidays. (Businessmen suggest it is a superfluity!).

So at time of writing - mid January - we have just had Christmas and the western, calendar New Year. At the end of January this year will be Chinese New Year which sees out the Year of the Monkey and welcomes in the year of the Rooster. Later in the year will be celebrations for the Muslim New Year and then the Indian one.

To keep in sync with the international community, on January 1 we welcomed in  2017, but for the Chinese and Malays their year has a different number. It can get quite confusing!

The government has decreed that if any of these holidays fall at a weekend, then it will be celebrated on the following day(s). This occurs several times this year, with both the Western and the Chinese New Year falling at weekends.

So January will have been a good month, or a bad month depending on whether you look at it from the point of view of holidaying workers or productivity seeking business owners. Most people enjoy the four day weekends and wish there were more of them!          

Chinese New Year

The festivities for Chinese New Year actually spread over 2 weeks, though there is time off for celebration is a standard two days, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

The very acrobatic Lion Dances are very popular
during the Chinese New Year.

Chinese New Year is a time when the Chinese look back and honour their ancestors as well as celebrate with their families. The festivities start on New Year’s Eve when the family gathers together for prayers and festivities. Much whisky and brandy will be consumed on this evening.

Fireworks are synonymous with China, and at midnight on New Year’s Eve, the quiet of the night is shattered by a cacophony of firecrackers. Municipalities prepare exotic firework displays which are as visually exciting as they are noisy. In days gone by there used to be strings of firecrackers which stretched from the roof of a building down to ground level, which made it sound as if you were in the middle of a battle zone! Mind you, there were very few multi-storey buildings then.

All of these firecrackers leave a real mess of red paper of course, which is an externality of CNY (as it is known). It is regarded as bad luck for the family who let them off to sweep up the debris from crackers, so it falls on the street sweeper to do the honors. I used to live next door to a wealthy Chinese family, who let off many crackers, the debris from which blew into my yard, so I became the street sweeper for the day.

Bob