Happy Chinese New Year!

The year of the Rabbit is here, folks! And with it, the Chinese start to spring (although, the snow's piled so high spring will have to be redefined for this year).  Chinese New Year is a fantastic time- food, money, and lots 'o love is all around!!  Here's some factoids about Chinese New Year that I know off the top of my head:

• Red is a lucky color.  Luck is good!
• You're supposed to clean out the house before the New Year- but....
• Kids get money in red envelopes.  That's good too!
• Oranges represent something along the lines of wealth or something good like that...
• Fish should be eaten, because the word for fish in Chinese sounds like another word that means something good....
• You should have plenty of leftovers to represent a prosperous year.
• If you're from northern China (and excuse me if I get this all wrong), dumplings are eaten as well
• Offering sticky, sweet candies to the Kitchen God ensures that he'll only say nice things about your family.  If you want the whole story (and it is kind of amusing), look it up on google!
• There's a type of cake called nian gao that's sort of sticky and sweet and really tasty and is also supposed to represent something good.  What, I don't know, but it sure does taste good!

So, in summary, this is about as far as my family celebrates Chinese New Year, save for offering candy to the Kitchen God, the dumplings, and the cleaning the house part.  And hanging decorations of various lucky and springy and wealthy words around the house.  But, we do get a lot of food!