Welcome again to everybody! Happy Lunar New Year. Make yourself at home. Go ahead and stand on that inconspicuous floor tile over there. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread!
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It’s not lunar though - it’s lunisolar. And there are other ‘lunar new years’ that happen on different dates. And what we got in the west is the Chinese version, essentially, as it was brought to us by Chinese immigrants.
I’m not saying your intentions were anything other than noble, but it’s worth being aware that in a wider social and media context, it’s a sinophobic rebranding by the US which I’m sure will spread to the wider western media landscape in the coming years.
Wait, is it a rebranding? The comments here are making it sound like a psyop when these terms have been used and continue to be used interchangeably all my life. This feels like the “Merry Christmas” vs “Happy holidays” crusade that conservatives wage every year.
Well the folks over at r/sino seem to think so, and I’ve seen one social media post specifically calling it ‘Korean New Year’ which is and extra weird choice. Personally I’ve never ever heard anything other than Chinese New Year in my nearly 4 decades on this rock, until this year. I’m willing to admit I’m spicy-mayo so I’m not the authoritative source though.
The one place I’d heard of a “Lunar Festival” was in World of Warcraft which, tbf, does not have a place called China. Their Lunar Festival is very much based on CNY though, albeit not tied to their in-world China expies, the Pandaren, but rather it’s a druidic thing, while Pandaren are incapable of being druids.
Was that user celebrating the Korean version of the event? Because afaik the holiday is common to all of East Asia with different countries having their own customs.
And I’ve never heard it called the “Lunar Festival” either, only “Lunar New Year” and “Chinese New Year”. But international video games often go out of their way to avoid namedropping real-life holidays so I’m not sure if we should be taking any stock in WoW. For example, Animal Crossing calls Easter “Bunny Day” and Christmas “Toy Day”.
I can’t find the original tweet I saw now, all I can get is Justin Trudeau calling it that. But yeah, my point was that it’s western governments cynically trying to detach the holiday from its roots in the west using ‘inclusivity’. They have zero interest in or care for other east-asian populations that adopted CNY, it’s purely a political maneouvre.
And yeah, I wasn’t slighting WOW, they’ve been saying Lunar Festival for almost 20 years and also don’t refer to Christmas or Easter (Winter Veil and Noblegarden respectively) and they even have Oktoberfest which they call Brewfest. I was only pointing out that that’s the only place, until this year, that I’d seen CNY called something else, and it was in a fictional universe.
Coming from a western politician, yeah it’s probably a geopolitical thing. But I don’t think everyone uses the term “lunar new year” as a way to distance themselves from China. Chicago Chinatown refers to the holiday both ways and that’s how I’m used to hearing it. I didn’t know it wasn’t like this everywhere.