Modern festive pantang

Pantang here doesn't mean the village in Ghana Pantang West. It's a traditional Malay word for taboo of ritual prohibition.

Today, I'm gonna highlight two things we Pantang in the modern society in this multi cultural country. You may think we don't give a fish about tradition, sometimes I think we're more superstitious than our ancestors.

The tradition of giving red packet during the 1st day of lunar new year, is to help the younger generation to "leap year", therefore the packet will bring luck, wealth, health and all sorts of blessing one can imagined. However, this only applicable as, the married to give red packet to the unmarried. With the current divorce rate and preferred to stay single, giving red packet has become one of the biggest challenge of the century. I had to oftenly emphasize to my younger "grandnieces and grandnephews" that their granduncle "this year not married".

Another thing being contradicting blessing. In the Chinese tradition we emphasized the word "满", which means full. On the contrary, we also prefer to have balance（余), so we can keep some earnings. That is one big problem that combined with the tradition of conserve(not to waste 俭). During this festive season, we tend to prepare more food than we can consume to fulfill the "fullness", on the other hand we need to have balance, which means the host need to keep filling the dining table for all the guests. And what happened to the balance? We can't waste it, naturally we need to consume it 😅

If thanksgiving consume a turkey is a chore for you, imagine we need to keep the turkey coming 🤣 And therefore, not every Chinese guy you see during the lunar new year is happy. One way or another, it's some sort of punishment for us. For now, let's keep the weighing scale under the fridge, we shall face the consequences after this 15 days of feast!