By Tom McGuire, with contributions from his wife Florence
January 29, 2025, is the first day of the Spring Festival, the Year of the Snake. The Spring Festival is also known as the Chinese New Year and the Lunar New Year. People from many different Asian countries celebrate this fifteen-day festival rooted in Chinese culture.
When I was in Hong Kong, the Spring Festival was an important introduction to Chinese culture. My first experience was in 1970, the Year of the Dog. On New Year’s Eve, I walked the always busy streets of Hong Kong; they were empty. Chinese people were celebrating the family reunion dinner on the eve of the Spring Festival, which was an event I needed to learn about.
As my Cantonese improved, I became friends with Chinese university students. By the 1971 Spring Festival, the Year of the Pig, a Chinese student friend, Steve Tang, invited me to his family’s Spring Festival Reunion Dinner. All members of his immediate family living in Hong Kong were present, and they welcomed me with open hearts. As the meal began, members of the family explained the symbolism of the different dishes and talked about the customs they brought from their family village in China. That memorable family reunion dinner began my understanding that the Spring Festival symbols and rituals preserve traditions of ancient Chinese Culture.
The culturally diverse customs of Spring Festival celebrations reinforce the cultural heritage of family relationships as the source of the human virtues of Chinese civilization. The rituals, conversations, and the order and symbolism of dishes represent family harmony and the harmony meant to be extended for the benefit of the whole society.
For me, it seemed, the reunion dinner ritual, the way the food was served, where people sat at the table, and the polite nature of taking food from dishes reflected the Confucian virtue of humanity. C.H. Wu describes the key elements of the virtue of humanity in a quote from the Book of Rites:
Gentleness and meekness constitute the essence of humanity: reverence and prudence, its foundation; broad-mindedness and generosity, its flowering; humility and courtesy, its function; ceremony and ritual, its manners; sharing and distribution, its expansion. A scholar combines all these qualities, but still, he dares not claim full humanity. (p. 5, Chinese Humanism and Christian Spirituality)
Transformation virtue is achieved by self-cultivation desiring goodness, practicing discipline and attaining harmony in family relationships, a harmony extended to the larger society. It is about caring for other people.
During the Spring Festival, many Chinese Catholics go beyond the family reunion to participate in the celebration of the Sacred Meal, the Eucharist. A commemoration of the Last Supper and Jesus’ ultimate act of love, the sacrifice of his life for others.
The words of this sacred meal remind those gathered, as the Mystical Body of Christ, to live a transformed life sharing in the divine life of Christ. The words of the silent prayer said as a few drops of water are dropped into the Chalice of Wine reveal the essence of this mysterious transformation: "By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity."
Chinese Catholics who have practiced the virtues of humanity in the Spring Festival family reunion dinner gather for the Sacred Meal to celebrate the fullness of humanity by being one in Christ. “In his body lives the fullness of divinity, and in him you too find your own fulfillment (Col 2:–10, Jerusalem Bible).
Tom and Florence met in Hong Kong; they have been active in parish communities throughout their lives together, fostering friendship and dialogue between the Church in China and the Church in the US. Now retired and living in Chicago, they continue to live the mission of the gospel and give witness to Christ as our Hope.
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