Lunar Celebrations

It was a weekend full of lunar happenings for us, beginning not Sunday evening with the rest of the Western Hemisphere, but Saturday with a local Lunar Festival.  Three years running, Bud's kung fu team has performed at a celebration of the harvest moon.  Thankfully, unlike last year when rain interrupted the proceedings just as Bud was to go on, it was a beautiful day for the festival.  And the performance went off without a hitch.  Bud did his hand form and his broad sword, along with a dozen or more of his teammates.  So proud of him!  We grabbed lunch from our favorite Thai place and headed home.

On Sunday evening, we prepped to watch the supermoon lunar eclipse.  There are lots of articles about the uniqueness of this one:  supermoon closer to the earth than usual, full Harvest moon,  etc, the confluence of which won't be seen again til 2033.   From 8 pm to a little after 10 pm, we stayed in the yard and watched the moon darken from left to right, turning red as it did so.  Mama got some photos.  The kids played ninja and then parachute, while checking on the moon's progress.  We sang songs (moon songs, "Rainbow Connection,") and laughed at stories.   We even saw a skunk wander across the driveway!  The only thing we didn't have were s'mores and a campfire.  But it was a fun break from our usual routine, even if everyone was over-tired this morning.

I wonder what the kids will remember of this night, if anything, when they're 28?

Happy Harvest Festival

To celebrate the Moon Fest, we went to a festival today.  Ma and Gong came up to see Bud's kung fu team (and bring us celebratory moon cakes in a special tin with a rabbit in it.)  There were lion dancers, numerous kung fu forms, and several booths with food and activities.  Sis and Ma especially enjoyed tying Chinese knot bracelets with satin cord.  

Sis making me a purple bracelet, after making herself a red one

Happy Moon Fest

Today during their visit, Ma and Gong reminisced about the celebrations of the Mid-Autumn Moon Fest in Thailand during their childhoods.  They would make paper lanterns by hand, carefully folding special paper with the aid of a pen knife and a ruler (they demonstrated, roughly, with notepaper.)  At night, they would process gingerly with lit candles inside the delicate lanterns to celebrate the moon and the harvest.  Often, the lanterns would catch fire before too long.  They would eat Chinese mooncakes, stamped with images and writing, filled with lotus seed paste or nuts, seeds, and citrus  They also remember it as a holiday for women, with the Buddha's altar decorated with handicrafts, cosmetics, brushes, and other feminine articles.  It was a holiday, they recall, associated with Kwan Yin (or Guanyin)--or in Thai, Kuan Im--the goddess of mercy and compassion.

They told us these stories, demonstrated how to make lanterns, roughly, with a piece of notebook paper, and gave us mooncakes and pink and blue lanterns for our own celebration tomorrow.  We'll eat the mooncakes (or the rest of them; we started early!  Sis likes the lotus paste.  I eat both, but not the egg yolk inside.  Mama likes them all; not Bud.) and head outside at dusk with our new lanterns. We'll also read some of the stories about the Moon Rabbit, who (I think) lives in the harvest moon and Kwan Yin.

Happy Moon Fest, everyone!