Just a quick one for the first day of the Lunar New Year.
When I first arrived in Taiwan, I called it Chinese New Year or CNY. Then I realized that wasn't the best term, as many cultures outside of China -- including Taiwanese culture -- also celebrate this holiday, and it's probably not good practice to tie it to China. It also ties in with CCP attempts to co-opt every cultural touchstone they see as "Chinese", promote it as theirs alone, and force people who don't identify as Chinese to accept Chineseness. Gross.
Like most people who go through this phase, I landed on Lunar New Year, and I still think that's the best choice. Only once has someone pointed out that it's technically decided by the the farmers'/luni-solar calendar, not the "lunar" calendar, but honestly, the goal is to pick a culturally neutral term and I'm not sure we need to go down a deep rabbit hole to find one. Plus, such arguments are usually a tad disingenuous; the people who make them often want to keep "Chinese New Year" as the common term by de-legitimizing everything else.
(If you want to call it Lunisolar New Year, I certainly won't stop you.)
However, I quickly became a massive prig about Lunar New Year, to the point of correcting other people who said "Chinese New Year". I regret this. It's my holiday or part of my culture. I had no right to be correcting anyone for whom it is.
That didn't work either, though. A lot of students and trainees whom I knew didn't identify as Chinese and wanted to be able to talk about their cultures without having to link them to China still called it "Chinese New Year" for lack of a better term, especially as the word "Chinese" doesn't appear in any rendering of the holiday's name in any Sinitic language that I know of. The issue wasn't thinking that was the best word, it was an absence of alternatives -- a linguistic information gap. Some hadn't learned the word "lunar" yet.
I now recommend my current approach. I call it Lunar New Year, clarify the word "lunar" if there's any confusion, and explain why if the context is right. When someone calls it "Chinese New Year" and I'm in a situation where it's clear my suggestion wouldn't be unwelcome, I point out that "Lunar New Year" is an option and why if necessary. Then I follow that up with "...but you can call it what you want" or "you can choose".
The idea behind this is that language is a toolbox, and people who choose to take a language class (or study to become a teacher -- my main job these days is training) want those tools. They don't want or need to be told what to call things from their own culture in a foreign language. So instead of pushing cultural information -- forcing learners to accept that New Year is "Chinese" or not depending on your whims as a language authority -- it provides language information that can help them make their own choice. It raises awareness and offers options rather than providing a single 'way'.
This also provides room for the argument for "Lunar New Year" to be persuasive enough on its own merits, not because it was pushed on anyone. It also opens up that space for Taiwanese learners of English to discuss the issue themselves and either choose to disagree or come to a resolution. Plenty of Taiwanese activists are already doing this work; "Lunar New Year" was not a term invented by foreigners. If they want to push harder for Lunar New Year, they have a better foundation to do so than someone who's not from here. We can support them but I don't know that we can ever be them.
If a student or trainee continues to use "Chinese New Year", do I flinch a bit? Deep down in my heart of hearts, yes. Taiwan is my home and I do have opinions about it, as I've lived here a long time and have many local connections. But can we really call ourselves conscientious teachers of a language with an undeniably problematic history if we foist those opinions on people actually from the cultures we live in? The tools we offer can never be neutral, but they can be imbued with choice and their non-neutrality can be acknowledged.
So, I try not to show an outward reaction, even as I continue to call it Lunar New Year.
In other words, in the Year of the Ox, let's keep fighting CCP bullshit, but without resorting to their tactics of cultural imperialism. "Lunar New Year" will probably win out, because the case for it is sufficiently persuasive without your having to tell anyone what to think.
