Raise your hand if you knew Valentines Day 2010 was the same day as the Chinese New Year.
It's a dilemma for someone who loves holidays as much as I do to decide how to handle a double decker kind of day.
One year Matthew's birthday fell on Easter. Obviously, we couldn't not celebrate both, so instead we turned Matthew's party into an Easter Egg hunt. Then there was the year I graduated with my doctoral degree during Mother's Day weekend. Graduation isn't exactly a holiday, but after three years of rigorous work and giving birth to a dissertation, I intended to celebrate like it was a national holiday. My mother, mother in-law, and I compromised. We celebrated graduation and motherhood while receiving manicures and pedicures from a local spa in Athens, Georgia.
So snubbing the Chinese New Year simply because we Americans can out commercialize the rest of the world didn't seem right.
Luckily, the Chinese love the color red as much as Cupid.
Matthew and I decided on a compromise for his classmates. Traditional red Chinese envelopes made from felt (not paper) and filled with a mixture of Chinese tokens and good old fashioned American chocolates. Kids get their much anticipated candy and China, a civilization dating back somewhere around 67,000 years, gets the respect it deserves.
And don't think I won't milk this one on Sunday night when I suggest we eat Chinese food for dinner. How about you? What will you be doing on Valentines Day? And, are any of you Celebrating the Year of the Tiger?
Signing off until tomorrow...