Celebrate Anyway
I love to celebrate. It stems from my cultural upbringing, which is deeply rooted in celebration and community.
I’d like to share a story about celebration and why I choose to celebrate.
A Tradition of Celebration
For the past 25 years, my family has hosted a dumpling-making party to celebrate Lunar New Year. Each year, we invite some local friends to our home to make and eat hundreds of dumplings.
We vary the menu each year, though some staples remain constant. Some of our guests don’t know each other, and they all come with different dumpling-making skills. But once everyone gathers around our table of raw ingredients, they’re all invited to join in and get their hands dirty.
At this moment, something beautiful happens as strangers become part of this dumpling-making community. They learn to make three kinds of dumplings while they chat with each other and work for their meal. In the end, they leave full from the meal and the fellowship, with extra dumplings for another day.
Through this annual tradition, we celebrate the beauty of culture and food in the warmth of community.
Why celebrate?
Celebrating provides many benefits to both giver and recipient.
Giving Honor. The Chinese character for honor includes a character (荣) that also means glory. Celebrations give honor and glory to a worthy recipient.
Remembering the good. The bad already receives more than its fair share of attention. Celebrating shifts attention to what’s good and amplifies it.
Being present. Humans are social beings. Celebrations connect us to one another.
Creating space to rest. Celebration provides time and space to rest and recover from our everyday work.
Practicing celebration
To be honest, celebrations feel harder these days. Even for someone like me who likes celebrations, it’s hard to find something worth celebrating. Or I feel guilty because the world is on fire and celebrating anything good at all just seems inappropriate. Like dancing at a funeral.
Even at funerals though, some family members choose to call the memorial service a “celebration of life.” Alongside loss and grief, they remind those present that there’s a life worth celebrating. Death doesn’t get the final honor, the life someone lived does.
Choosing to celebrate reminds us to give honor, remember what is good, be present with one another, and create space to rest.
We still have agency to celebrate.
What’s something or someone you choose to celebrate today?
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