Happy Lunar New Year: Hey Tiger, good luck! We'll need it.
Thuan Le Elston
USA TODAY
As we welcome the Lunar New Year on Tuesday, let's give a collective hug to the Year of the Ox because in the past year, COVID-19 vaccinations allowed our family and friends to hug again. I'm not even a hugger, but I shamelessly and desperately went a little crazy reuniting with loved ones.
Because Lunar New Year is tied to the year's first new moon, it starts anytime from mid-January to mid-February. Last year, the holiday fell on Feb. 12; this year it's Feb. 1. The Middle English word for fortune, chance, luck or lot was "hap" or "happe." From it comes haphazard, hapless, happenstance, perhaps. If you've experienced more good luck than bad, you're happy.
"Happy," then, like "lunar" has no chance of being constant. Unlike Jan. 1 of New Year's Day.
From my journal dated Jan. 1, 2020 – "What a major year (this) will be: three kids graduating; a presidential election; a family trip to Vietnam, we hope."
As poet Mary Oliver wrote, "What is so utterly invisible as tomorrow?"
COVID lockdown in the Year of the Rat
Jan. 25, 2020, began the Year of the Rat, which is the first among a dozen animals in the Chinese zodiac. How did the rat beat out ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2022/01/31/covid-russia-lunar-new-year-tiger/9274345002/
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