Seiritsu

Surean New Year, commonly known as Seiritsu (正月), is the first day of the lunar Surean calendar. It is the most important of the traditional Surean holidays. It consists of a period of celebrations, starting on New Year's Day. The Surean also celebrate solar New Year's Day on January 1 each year, following the Gregorian Calendar. The Surean New Year holidays last three days, and is considered a more important holiday than the solar New Year's Day.

Surean New Year generally falls on the day of the second new moon after winter solstice, unless there is a very rare intercalary eleventh or twelfth month in the lead-up to the New Year. In such a case, the New Year falls on the day of the third new moon after the solstice (next occurrence will be 2033). Surean New Year is generally the same day as Mongolian New Year, Tibetan New Year, Chinese New Year, Korean New Year and Vietnamese New Year.

Customs[]

Surean New Year is typically a family-oriented holiday. The three-day holiday is used by many to return to their home towns to visit their parents and other relatives where they perform the ancestral ritual known as gyōzu (敬祖). Many Sureans dress up in colorful Jufuku.

Many Sureans greet the New Year (both Western and lunar) by driving to the coast or climb a mountain where they are most likely to see the first rays of the New Year's sun

Koitsuide[]

Koitsuide is the first trip to a shrine or temple. Many people visit a shrine after midnight on New Year Eve or sometime during the first day of Surean New Year. If the weather is good, people often dress up or wears jufuku.

Ohaeyubi[]

On New Year's Day, Surean people have a custom of giving money to children. This is known as ohaeyubi (年玉). It is handed out in small decorated envelopes called kimafumyoni (贈袋), similar to pochibukuro or Chinese red envelopes and to the Scottish handsel. Traditionally, large stores and wealthy families gave out a small bag of reman and a Mandarin orange to spread happiness all around. The amount of money given depends on the age of the child but is usually the same if there is more than one child so that no one feels slighted.

Hanenjō[]

The Surean have a custom of sending New Year's Day postcards (賀年状, hanenjō) to their friends and relatives. It is similar to the Western custom of sending Christmas cards. Their original purpose was to give your faraway friends and relatives tidings of yourself and your immediate family. In other words, this custom existed for people to tell others whom they did not often meet that they were alive and well.

Surean people send these postcards so that they arrive on the 1st day of New Year day. The post office guarantees to deliver the greeting postcards by that day if they are posted within a time limit. To deliver these cards on time, the post office usually hires students part-time to help deliver the letters.

It is customary not to send these postcards when one has had a death in the family during the year. In this case, a family member sends a simple postcard to inform friends and relatives they should not send New Year's cards, out of respect for the deceased.

People get their hanenjō from many sources. Stationers sell preprinted cards. Most of these have the Chinese zodiac sign of the New Year as their design, or conventional greetings, or both. The Chinese zodiac has a cycle of 12 years. Each year is represented by an animal. The animals are, in order: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and boar. 2006 was the year of the dog, 2007 was the year of the boar, 2008 was the year of the rat, and 2009 is the year of the ox. For 2006, famous dogs like Snoopy and other cartoon characters were especially popular. For 2008, Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse were popular.

The postcards may have spaces for the sender to write a personal message. Blank cards are available, so people can hand-write or draw their own. Rubber stamps with conventional messages and with the annual animal are on sale at department stores and other outlets, and many people buy ink brushes for personal greetings. Special printing devices are popular, especially among people who practice crafts. Software also lets artists create their own designs and output them using their computer's color printer. Because a gregarious individual might have hundreds to write, print shops offer a wide variety of sample postcards with short messages so that the sender has only to write addresses. Even with the rise in popularity of email, the hanenjō remains very popular in Surea.

Gifts exchange[]

In addition to hanenjō, which are usually given from elder to younger, small gifts (usually of food or sweets) are also exchanged between friends or relatives (of different households) during Surean New Year. Gifts are usually brought when visiting friends or relatives at their homes. Common gifts include fruits (typically oranges, and never pears), cakes, biscuits, chocolates, candies, or some other small gift.

Entertainment[]

There are many shows created as the end-of-year, and beginning-of-year entertainment, and some being a special edition of the regular shows. For many decades, it has been customary to watch the TV show Fuikaku Utta Hassen aired on TV Konggei on New Year's Eve. The show features two teams of popular music artists competing against each other.