On Jan. 28, the annual Lunar New Year celebration at Jefferson was held once again. However, it continued to evolve as students and parents honored their cultural traditions while introducing new and exciting elements.
This year, the event saw a change in leadership shifting from a primarily Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA) run event to being organized by student club officers.
“It’s been going on for a long time now, and in the past couple of years, it was PTSA or mostly the parents that ran it,” junior and co-president of Asian Awareness Club Emma He said. “There’d be different groups of parents, like Korean parents, Chinese parents, Japanese parents [and] they would all be in charge of their stations.”
This year, the event was run by five student-run organizations: the Korean Culture Club, Vietnamese Student Association, Asian Awareness, Japanese Culture Club and Chinese Honor Society.
“PTSA gave a $1,500 to grant five Asian student clubs to buy materials,” PTSA member Catherine Li said. “Volunteers are here to support them and help with all the activities.”
One of the biggest draws of the event is the variety of cultural activities offered.
“Last year and the years before that, the activities were pretty similar,” He said. “It was mostly like traditional Chinese or Lunar New Year activities like paper cutting. And then there were also some Korean Games.”
This year, the organizer also added a modern adaptation.
“A couple of things that we added would be related to ‘Squid Game’ actually,” He said. “Because of the popularity of the show, we added on some games that were played during the second season.”
Food remained a central part of the celebration, though financial challenges did arise during planning.
“Before, I was worried that we wouldn’t have enough money to cater the food,” He said. “Luckily, with the help of the parents, we [were] able to cater a lot of food with the money donated by the parents and other corporations.”
The event also featured several student performances, including Vietnamese dragon dancing, Chinese zither music, and a demonstration of Wushu.
“[To practice], [we] start off with running and conditioning and then move onto flips,” freshman Wushu performer Patrick Zhao said. “We practice our forms and make a final push at the end of the [practice].”
Historically, Chinese New Year had not been recognized by Fairfax County Public Schools. However this year the date was a school holiday for students allowing them to celebrate with their families.
“I do think that the holiday allows a lot of the Asian students to actually celebrate Chinese New Year,” He said. “I really do enjoy celebrating cultural celebrations like the new year.”