With omicron declining, gatherings go in-person for Lunar New Year

Thanks to a steep drop-off in omicron cases of coronavirus, plans to celebrate the Year of the Tiger are looking less and less like the virus-marred years of the Ox in 2021 or the Rat in 2020.

The prospect for in-person gatherings on Long Island and in New York City for the Lunar New Year looked bleak back starting in December 2021, when the variant emerged and led to a spike in infections across the globe.

Perhaps gatherings would need to be canceled, as happened soon after the pandemic began in early 2020, or stay largely virtual, as they were a year later, in 2021, before widespread vaccination.

But now, with the lower infection rate — the number on Long Island dipped below 1,000 this week for the first time since early December, before the omicron variant surged; cases were down 86% in the past three weeks — some celebrations of the Lunar New Year, which this year falls on Tuesday, Feb. 1, are beginning to return, cautiously, to in-person events.

The reprieve couldn’t come soon enough.

"I think many people are Zoomed out," said Christine Liu, co-president of the Herricks Chinese Association, who is helping organize a celebration at the local high school.

She spoke Monday night as she prepared a Chinese hot pot meal including Napa cabbage, enoki mushrooms, head-on shrimp, rolled pork and beef and taro and tofu for 10 friends and family in Herricks.

The Lunar New Year, sometimes called the Chinese New Year, is celebrated by Asian cultures around the world and dates back thousands of years. The annual date in the Western calendar it’s celebrated varies depending on moon cycles. During the holiday, small, red envelopes of money are exchanged, dragons roar in parades and festivals, and families gather for get-togethers.

But for the past two years, the pandemic has marred celebrations, as with nearly every other holiday across the globe from all cultures.

For the Herricks event, an in-person celebration was supposed to be on Feb. 5. It was switched in December to virtual with the surge in omicron cases looming. But in recent weeks, the decline in cases led the district to resuscitate the in-person event, Liu said. Due to scheduling issues, the event will now be March 12, with doors opening at 6:30 p.m, featuring lion dancing, a sing-along, martial arts, Chinese yo-yo, and an orchestra, along with raffles.

Liu said she’s looking forward to the in-person event, the 20th such celebration.

"Performances are always better live and the atmosphere will be so much more festive," she said: the 2021 event was on Zoom, and the 2020 event was canceled altogether.

Still, the rescheduled event won’t be as big as usual: 225 seats compared to 1,000, the typical pre-pandemic audience, and there will be masks, social distancing and other precautions, she said.

("It's the year of the Tiger!! Let's celebrate together at Herricks High School," the district said through its PR agency, Syntax.)

There are an estimated 59,658 Asians in Suffolk and 140,604 in Nassau, according to the Census.

The Lin family of New Hyde Park — parents Larry, 51, and Phoebe, 49, and their son, Aidan, 16, and twin daughters Brooke and Bridget, 13 — fretted that the beloved Lunar New Year parade in Flushing, Queens, they’ve long attended might need to be canceled for yet another year.

"We felt bad about not going to one the last two years," said Larry Lin, a health care consultant.

"Last year was the year of the Ox, which symbolizes strength and prosperity. But we didn’t feel the strength of our society, medical system, or wealth," Lin said, lamenting how the pandemic devastated the economy and some of his neighbors’ finances.

But with the decline in cases, Lin said, he’s looking forward to attending a Lunar New Year reunion dinner, worshipping in person, as well as taking the Long Island Rail Road to the parade Saturday — all of which were uncertain until quite recently.

"I am cautiously excited to go to all of these," he said as he prepared to go to a restaurant on Jericho Turnpike in New Hyde Park with his family and two neighbors’ families.

He noted that if omicron cases hadn’t declined, the families would have likely all dined in their own homes.

And he said he and his family are eagerly anticipating when pandemic restrictions, now going on their third year, can all end — particularly his kids.

"They are also looking forward to the day when everyone has the option to safely remove masks in school," he said, "so they can see each other again."

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.