My husband's family is Chinese and it's a Chinese tradition to celebrate when a baby turns one month old. This tradition dates back to when infant mortality rates were high and new moms would spend a month in postpartum confinement. At this one month birthday, mom rejoins the world and they announce the baby’s name to family and friends.
Red represents good luck and happiness. Eggs are symbols of fertility and renewal of life. Ginger is representative of the postpartum mama; an ingredient that’s beneficial for her postpartum recovery.
It’s also tradition to celebrate when a baby turns 100 days old. Since we live two states away from most of our friends and family, we chose to have Matthew's Red Egg & Ginger party closer to his 100 days birthday.
Here's the invitation I created:
I had originally created a simpler invitation. When I showed it to my husband he joked that I should create a cartoon of our son riding a horse (it's the Year of the Horse), holding a red egg and some ginger. It was too awesome of an idea to NOT do!
We invited about fifty of our friends and relatives to join us at a local restaurant for a traditional Chinese banquet. I created a centerpiece that was made from an 8.5x11 piece of card stock that I tri-folded and put information on each of the three panels. One panel listed the evening's menu, one listed the names of everyone sitting at that table, and the third panel briefly explained the history behind the shindig for our non-Chinese friends and family.
Since a Chinese banquet is serves family-style on a lazy Susan, these centerpieces were easily moved once the food started coming out.
Lastly, I created this fun favor tag that adorned red, plastic eggs that were filled with ginger candy. My older son loved having the responsibility of handing these out to guests.
It's often common to give dyed, hard-boiled eggs to guests, but neither my mother-in-law nor I wanted to boil and dye that many eggs. They never really end up truly red either, they usually end up pink.
If you'd like to see more from my son's Red Egg and Ginger party, check out the full post on Mama Say What?!
