Lunar New Year Festivities

People are celebrating Lunar New Year, The Year of the Horse 2026. South Coast Plaza, an international tourist destination mall in Southern California, has beautiful decorations and captivating displays. Me and my husband went and a couple of days later, a friend who is a former coworker sent me photos of what she saw there. South Coast Plaza put a lot of work into their invitation for people to see and interact with their take on LNY. People in historically Chinese-style dresses were taking pictures because visually there were highly inviting photo opportunities. I liked seeing people posing for pictures - their photos are going to memorable.

I decided to take pictures of the Horse statue featured by Macy's. I felt like I was on the outside looking in and the in was fascinating. Red is big for LNY. I'm not very familiar to the holiday but think the traditions are certainly intriguing. Here's the photo I took:

I asked a friend whose parents are from Taiwan about LNY and red envelopes. Her description of the red envelopes given out around this time, typically to children, and sometimes for adults makes me smile.

These envelopes have good things inside: money or a gift card or something to brings joy and well wishes for the year. South Coast Plaza marks this Year of the Horse as February 17th, 2026 to March 1st, 2026. My research, which consists of asking another friend who has gone to Asian Garden Mall in Westminster during their LNY celebration, and asking Google and Duckduckgo, states the date as being February 17th, 2026. I'm sure there is a lot more info on different sites and tons of books. The holiday is pretty interesting, don't you think?