New York State Goes to Unprecedented Lengths to Celebrate Chinese Holiday – All Schools Ordered to Shut Down

Students at government schools in New York state had a day off Wednesday.

But rather than keeping kids at home for a statewide in-service training day or snow day, the day off came because of Lunar New Year, a holiday celebrated in Asian countries like China.

That is because New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill back in September 2023 that declared Asian Lunar New Year a public school holiday across New York State, according to a release from her office at the time.

“By designating Lunar New Year as an official school holiday, we are taking an important step in recognizing the importance of New York’s AAPI community and the rich diversity that makes New York so great,” Hochul said in a statement.

“It is not just a day off from school — it is an opportunity for our children to learn about and celebrate their own or different cultures and traditions,” she added.

That day off will be a drastically different day every single year, presenting obstacles for parents trying to take time off from work to unexpectedly care for their kids on a random Wednesday, according to a report from the Democrat and Chronicle, a daily newspaper in Rochester.

Lunar New Year usually falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice.

This year, it is Jan. 29. Last year, it was Feb. 10.

New York Democratic House Speaker Carl Heastie also said in the release from Hochul’s office that the day off is meant to recognize the many cultures in the Empire State’s population.

“New York State is beautifully diverse, with people from different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds living, working and raising families together,” he said.

“The Lunar New Year holiday will give thousands of Asian students in our state the ability to gather together and celebrate with family and friends without having to [sacrifice] their education.”

Heastie also said that the change in the school calendar will “shine a light on the culture and traditions of our Asian friends and neighbors, and in a time where we have seen hate and violence against Asian communities, this will open people’s eyes, encouraging tolerance and acceptance.”

While there may indeed be a sizable Asian community in New York City, keep in mind that much of the state beyond the Big Apple is composed of rural small towns with very few Asian immigrants.

Surely having a day off from school to recognize a holiday from halfway around the world, to which those communities have virtually no connection, must be bizarre for them.

The obvious question that arises from this new requirement is where such logic ends.

The Democrats like to emphasize cultural diversity over assimilation into American culture while they pander to the various ethnic coalitions that compose their voting base.

But seeing as there are thousands of cultures around the world and hundreds represented in a state like New York, we have to wonder whether every other ethnic community is entitled to its own public holidays as well.

If government schools are closed on every single holiday or festival of note from around the world, then there may hardly be a day on which students are actually able to attend school.

This move also points to the cultural relativism that claims all cultures are the same as others. This effectively cheapens American and Western holidays.

After all, if Lunar New Year is placed on the same footing in the public square as historically recognized Christian holidays like Christmas and American holidays like Thanksgiving, that is an implicit statement about the relative value of those holidays in the life of our nation.

In other words, Lunar New Year may very well be fine for China and other Asian nations, but the holiday need not be, and should not be, shoehorned into America.

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