Chinese New Year Mass Greeting -- Year of the Rabbit

Thu, 01/13/2011 - 18:20 | by l_hsu


Chinese New Year is a very important occasion in Chinese culture as well as at CAIS. Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, is a time for families to be together; at school we bring our entire CAIS family together for Mass Greeting, which is happening on the eve of Chinese New Year on Wednesday, February 2.

Mass Greeting at CAIS is truly a community-wide event in which students from Kindergarten through eighth grades lead the CAIS family in songs, music and dance to celebrate Chinese New Year and Spring Festival. The term Mass Greeting signifies the tradition of offering loud, enthusiastic greetings, often referred to as Jíxiánghùa or auspicious words or phrases.

For those of you new to the CAIS community, this is the largest celebration at school and we encourage both you and your child to wear traditional Chinese outfits or the color red on this day to signify the lucky color for the New Year.

While our pre-k students do not participate in the actual performance, our hope is for pre-k families to come to Mass Greeting with their children as audience members to learn about the celebration. If pre-k families are unable to take the time off work to attend, pre-k classes are in session during that time. For those pre-k families planning on attending the celebration, you need not drop your child off at school prior. Your child will begin his/her school day after Mass Greeting.

The culminating presentation at Mass Greeting is the lion dance, which is performed by the sixth grade class. The dance is symbolic and is performed as a ceremony to exorcise evil spirits and to summon luck and fortune for the New Year. The sixth grade class takes its lion dance responsibilities very seriously and with pride. They will continue to perform during the weeks following Mass Greeting, including in the halls and classrooms of CAIS and at community events including the Chinese New Year celebration at the Asian Art Museum on Sunday, February 6.

Classrooms are bustling with Chinese New Year activities during the week leading up to Mass Greeting as students learn about the traditions surrounding this important celebration.

We look forward to celebrating the Year of the Rabbit, year 4708 by Chinese calendar with all of our CAIS family.

What you need to know

  • Mass Greeting community-wide event to celebrate Chinese New Year
  • Wednesday February 2 from 9:15-11:15 a.m.
  • Classes resume as usual after Mass Greeting.
  • No school or childcare on Thursday, February 3 in observance of Chinese New Year. School resumes Friday, February 4