Celebration or Complication?

Why Chinese New Year is Such an Emotionally Complicated Holiday

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Chinese New Year holds special meaning for many across East and Southeast Asia.

It is supposed to be simple in its meaning. It is a time of reconnecting with family, celebrating togetherness, and reflecting on personal journeys – goals, achievements, and dreams. It symbolises reunion, renewal, luck, and abundance – a brightly coloured, loud reset button pressed once a year to drown out whatever that came before. The imagery is familiar and reassuring: red banners pasted slightly crooked on doorframes, Chinese New Year songs playing in the background, oranges stacked in glossy pyramids, elders seated at the centre of the table, and children orbiting them with sugar-fuelled excitement.

Even people who claim not to care about tradition often find themselves pulled into its gravity. You show up. You eat. You say the right things. You wish each other prosperity, health, and happiness. And yet, for a holiday so dedicated to togetherness, Chinese New Year can feel surprisingly heavy for some people. Beneath the noise and ritual lies an emotional complexity that many people recognise but rarely want to articulate. It is a season thick with comparison, performance, and expectation - a time when private anxieties are quietly amplified by public celebration. For some, it is the only time of the year when the entire family is in one room, which makes it precious but yet, unbearable. It is a time when the distance between who they are and who they are expected to be becomes impossible to ignore as it is brought out into the open.

REUNION TALK