My son, Stephen, displayed a video of the recent Japanese New Year celebration in which the Year of the Ox became the Year of the Tiger. They actually had a baby ox on stage (looked just like a normal calf) and brought a tiger out on the same stage. Both were on leashes. As I watched I remembered that probably the Chinese were doing the same thing right about that time. I checked online for Chinese New Year and it was the same. I sent a Happy New Year and Happy Spring Festival greeting to our former foreign exchange student, Luo Lan. She returned the greeting, thanking me for it, and explained that she had an unhappy New Year because she had to work. She is a flight attendant for a Chinese airline and was dismayed to not be able to celebrate the New Year at home with her mother and father. She had been required to be on board an airplane instead.
I could feel some of her pain as I remembered, rather vaguely now, the lonely Christmas and New Year holidays seasons I had spent in the U.S. Army after I was drafted. This was during the Vietnam War. I knew there must be many people who shared her situation--even on her flight--so I told her about how I and my Army buddies used to celebrate the holidays in the best ways we could. We bought items representing the holidays and used them to help us feel a little of what we might normally feel at home.
Certainly it would never be the same as being with family, I told her, but there would be people around her eager to offer her support and who shared her predicament. She could probably celebrate the Spring Festival and New Year on a smaller scale and still enjoy it.
I gave her our love and closed my email, knowing that it never really was very fun for me during the holidays, but that there always seemed to be someone to share them with.
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