Celebrating Regional Holidays - Qiqiao Festival

We love to celebrate holidays. We try to at least talk about all of them as they occur not just the big ones like Christmas and Easter. I usually try to do special food and art and stories. There are so many different cultures in Singapore each with their own holidays. Most I've never even heard of which is a little intimidating and also really exciting. It's so fun learning along with the kids.

I know when the big holidays are coming, like tomorrow is National Day cerebrating Singapore's independence from Malaysia. But it's the little holidays that are at risk of slipping through the cracks here and they're so fun. Thankfully Jonathan hears about the current holidays at work and passes along the holiday notifications to us.

Yesterday was Quqiao Festival (Chinese Valentine's Day) which celebrates the romantic legend of the weaver fairy and the cowherd. Like so many Chinese legends it's a tragic story with lovely simple elements (the ox, flower garlands, stars, magpies).

Jonathan sent us a message about it while we were eating popsicles at a table outside, and because you can find anything online, I was able to read the girls the legend as we sat there. The link to the legend is above if you want to read it too.

Ms.E was a little horrified over the ox's death, and Ms.C wanted to know at what time we would be able to see the magpie bridge across the Milky Way that night. She said she was going to stay up till midnight to see it.

There is an awful lot of light from the city at night so I'm not sure we would have seen much beside the Cheshire-smile crescent moon. The moon isn't side ways like in Canada; here it looks like a smile. I'm shocked every time I see.

We talked about making a flower garland or drawing the magpie bridge in our journals, but we went to the pool for the morning instead.