Monday, January 26, 2009

Bye-bye to My Year

Happy New Year, all! It's the first day of the new year of the ox. If you're an ox (which you are if you're born a multiple of 12 years back from this year), you're supposed to be dependable, hardworking, logical and modest. You can also be stubborn and materialistic.

... Yeah, that pretty much describes what you would imagine as an anthropomorphic ox. Anyway, marrying into a Chinese family, this sort of thing was always a favorite past-time. My mother-in-law (with help from *her* mother-in-law) would run through all the attributes of one or another of the kids based on their zodiac animal, and we'd all laugh about who matched their description. Then there was the inevitable match-making round where their zodiac was compared to that of their significant other.*

Either way, the Chinese New Year would end in eating lots of food, especially chicken (I don't know why) and little peanut butter pastries I forget the name of. In the last few years, the family hasn't gotten together as much, but I still enjoy thinking about it and hoping it'll happen again. Maybe one day I'll attempt to make the peanut butter things. (Probably not.)

*Jon and I, as a pig and rat respectively, got the stamp of approval.

2 comments:

ALV said...

I'm an ox. :) Suits me, yes?

Unknown said...

Peanut butter pastries? I never got peanut butter pastries. Of course, I'm still vexed that I haven't gotten my lai cee yet.