Is it weird that my family does not celebrate Chinese New Year?
My father has always been a massive workaholic who always works through the holidays.
He has also cut off all ties with his side of the family. He still remains in contact with his parents just not with his siblings. I have never spoken to any of my 3 uncles before, two of whom are still living with my grandparents, both were ex-convicts for gang-related offenses.
According to my dad all they do is ask for money to buy cigarettes, alcohol, and gamble so my dad saw it fit to walk away from them permanently.
The other uncle, a taxi driver, is really adversarial towards the “elite” and my dad went to RI so they never got along.
My mom is Chinese-Australian who was adopted and raised by white parents. She came to Singapore after she married my dad when he was reading medicine at the University of Melbourne.
For obvious reasons she never celebrated CNY.
I spent the first 12 years of my life in Australia after which my dad moved me and my sister back home because I had gotten into NYGH. I’ve been here ever since and it’s been almost 20 years. We used to travel during the CNY holidays, and now that I have a kid of my own, I don’t know whether it will be right for me to start celebrating the tradition for his sake because I do not feel any emotional connection with this holiday. If I do it I will really only be doing it for his sake.
My husband doesn’t observe the holiday either because he’s also a workaholic like my dad who likes to work through holidays. He thinks traditional holidays are a “waste of time.”
Hope some kind soul out there could spend some time enlightening me on the benefits of raising my child in a way that could make him more in tune with his cultural background.
Or is it purely superfluous and I shouldn’t bother with ceremony if I don’t practice it myself?