Happy Losar (Tibetan New Year)!! (2)

On the night of the dark moon, new year's eve, the family gathers around a steaming hot dumpling soup called gutuk, which literally means ninth soup. Everything must be nine. There must be at least nine ingredients and everyone must eat at least nine bowls. Some of the dumplings have surprises wrapped into them. As the meal begins, each person opens one of these special dumplings. The object one finds will indicate, much like a fortune cookie, that person's personality. According to Rinjing Dorje's Food in Tibetan Life (Prospect Books, London, 1985), if one finds salt, that is a good sign and means that one is all right; the one who finds wool is very lazy; coal indicates maliciousness; chili points out the one who is rough spoken; a white stone foretells a long life; sheep pellets are a good sign and means that one is very clever; and butter says that one is very sweet and easy going. Some families also insert slips of paper with more explicit messages, making the dumplings true fortune cookies.

At the end of the meal, everyone takes what is left in their bowl and dumps it back into the wok, as well as a piece of hair, fingernail, and old clothing. The chimney is cleaned and the dirt from that is also put into the wok. A dough effigy which represents the collective evil and ill will of the past twelve months is made and put in on top of everything else. The wok is then taken out late at night and deposited in the middle of an intersection of roads or paths with much shouting, ringing of bells, and beating of pots and pans so that the contained evil can be dispersed in all four directions. This ceremony, called lue, is done to get rid of all the negative forces at the end of the year so that the new year can begin unencumbered.

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