Praying to the God of Wealth :Chinese New Year Pt. 1.5

This is the second part of my previous entry, I almost forgot about the night part of the praying day!

My aunt who dropped by earlier today was telling my mother how to pray to the  “God of Wealth” for tonight.  Since our family has a business, worshipping the “God of Wealth” or Tsai Shen Yeh is a must.

My sister prays to the god of wealth

My aunt would tell my mother the exact time we should pray and the exact direction the table should be set up. Mom can be a bit paranoid about this and I think last year we had a little bit of hiccups, I think the table wasn’t facing the right direction, so we had to check the neighbors who were also praying to reset the table.

 

Money box : A must for praying to the wealth god, the more money in the box, the better.

Praying for the Tsai Shen Yeh is much simpler than praying for my grandma this morning. The important things on the table in term of food are orenges, five kinds of fruits, five kinds of dried food, some tea and some kind of cakes. It’s almost like inviting a special guest to the house for the new year day and prepare a feast specially.  After the feast, then he can go back to where he’s from which, in this case it is heaven.

There’s holy water inside the big silver bowl on the table. This is used to sprinkle on every rooms in the house for good luck and also on people who live in the household. The remaining water is used to wash the face or shower later on.

 

Burning of the Paper Money

Before we start sprinkle the holy water, we had to burn the paper money first, which we also did this morning. This is to say thank you to the god for coming to our house. I have to tell you, I’m very impressed with this new bucket my mother recently bought. The paper burn so much quicker than they used to be because of the holes that designed to let the air in better than the previous bucket we had.  When I asked the price though, mother simply said, couple of thousand bahts.  Upon hearing that, I’m not too sure if it’s worth it…since we are using it only several times a year.

Tonight, my aunt arrived from Hua Hin to stay with us before going to my grandfather’s house together tomorrow. It will be fun!