Cute Bunnies and Red Undies

Happy Chinese New Year Everyone! In case your lunar calendar isn’t properly set, this is the brand new year of 4708. (Makes 2011 seem so laughably young, doesn’t it?)
In the Chinese zodiac, where every year is represented by an animal, it is also the year of the rabbit. Out with the tiger, in with the cute fluffy bunnies! Cute fluffy bunnies are dominating the scenes these days with many, many New Year decorations featuring lots of painfully adorable bunnies, and even some smart-aleky, carrot munching, friends with Fudd bunnies too. (That’s Bugs in case you didn’t get it.)
It is also Ryan’s year, and I suspect many of my friends years as well. If you were born in the year 1975, (after February) then you were born in the year of the rabbit. (Other rabbit years: 1927, 39, 51, 63, 87 and 99.)
If you are a rabbit, listen up, this is important. You would think that the year your Chinese zodiac animal would roll around would be lucky. But not so. In fact, we have been told that it is bad luck when it is your year. But there is something you can do to combat the bad luck and it’s something pretty much everyone can do. Wear red underwear. That’s right, wearing red underwear can ward off the bad luck and make it a happy year for you yet.
I know right now, in China there are literally over a billion people eating a ton of food, setting off fireworks and enjoying themselves. I lived through it last year and it practically killed me. (Spring festival is a 10-day holiday with fireworks going off at just about every second of those ten days. It’s amazing anyone has any eyes or finger left after the holiday finishes, much less sleep deprivation hallucinations.)
This year I am celebrating it back in the US (which means I am ignoring it as it is a little celebrated festival in America), but my mind is back in China with all my friends and students who are probably having a great time together with their families.
Happy New Year!