Ancestral prayers

Chinese New Year comes in five days' time. For my family, the prelude to Chinese New Year does not begin with the grand send off of the Kitchen God on the 24th day of the 12th lunar month simply because we do not have this deity's altar in the house. 

Instead, we kick off our preparations with a simple vegetarian offering to the memory of my grandparents, parents and aunt. We always keep our offerings very simple: only assorted fruits and tidbits are offered; no meat-based food are permitted despite our baba-nyonya background. Thus, there's no cooking at all. This has been our practice for the past half century or so, and I'm simply following tradition. At the end of the worship, there's no burning of gold or silver paper money either. 

But we still practice divination by throwing two old coins to "ask" whether the departed have arrived at my household to enjoy the offered fruits and tidbits to them, or whether they have finished "blessing" them. It's all a matter of chance because the coins will turn up either heads or tails, but sometimes I think there is some unseen force controlling the coins. 

I'll tell you why: there have been two occasions in the past when I simply couldn't get a confirmation of their "presence" despite throwing the coins a dozen times in succession. It was either both heads or both tails. Then I realised that I hadn't requested the invisible door spirits to let them into the house. A quick appeal to the door spirits and bingo! The coins turned positive at the next toss: a head and a tail showed up immediately! Sometimes, you just have to believe in the unexplainable.

So what comes next after this? For my family, there's this putting up of a red cloth banner with auspicious words over the main doorway. It symbolises that the family is ready to greet in the new year. All around the neighbourhood and indeed, in almost every Chinese household in the country, this red cloth banner will be hung up between now and New Year's Eve.

PS. I came across this picture and a four-line pantun (and its translation) in The Peranakan Community of Western Australia on facebook today. It was about the worship to send off the Kitchen God to the Jade Emperor where he would then make his annual report on the household.

Somewhere among the offerings would be the tnee koay (甜粿); the stickier the better so that the jaws of the Kitchen God would be stuck shut and the deity wouldn't be able to spread any unsavoury report. Another version is that the tnee koay will allow the deity to report only sweet things to the Jade Emperor and thus spare that household from any bad consequences. Either way, the pantun is worthy of reproduction here:

Pagi, pagi berseh berseri, 
Dalam dapor sembah diberi, 
Tarikh Datok balik ke-tinggi, 
Pulang ke-romah ari Cheh See!   

(Translation)

From earliest morning everything looks resplendent, 
The family gathers in the kitchen offering their obeisance, 
Today, marks the date the Deity returns for his annual report, 
He returns back home on the 4th day of the New Year!