Ushering in Year of the Snake

Traditionally, at this Yuletide period, best wishes for a “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’’ are exchanged by many people throughout the world. In Korea, in greeting the New Year while bidding farewell to the old one, the most typically heard greetings may be “Wish you a great deal of fortune in the New Year!” At this time, many banking institutions distribute free New Year calendars to customers. In many cases, the calendars are printed with Chinese zodiac symbols, animal signs.

There are 12 animal signs in the Chinese zodiac chart. In the old days, the animal signs were used for dating years. This system represents a cyclical concept of time in the Orient. Cyclical means something that is repeated time after time according to a pattern with a cycle of 12 years. Each year is assigned by an animal sign according to a repeating cycle: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. Therefore, every 12 years the same animal sign would be repeated.

These Chinese zodiac animal signs are still used in some Asian countries such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam that were under cultural influence of the Chinese language in the old days. Some of the animals in the zodiac chart differ by country. For instance, in Vietnam, the Water Buffalo is used instead of the Ox, and the Cat instead of the Rabbit. The Japanese zodiac includes the Wild Boar instead of the Pig.

These 12 signs, referred to Earthly Branches, and the other 10 Heavenly Stems are the basic two cycles that are used for producing a cyclic numeral system of 60 combinations, which is the Chinese sexagenarian cycle. The year of 2013 is the “Year of Gye Sa,” otherwise referred to as the Year of the Snake. Actually, the Year of the Snake, according to the Chinese lunar calendar, begins on Feb. 10, 2013. But, it is a tradition in Korea to apply the sexagenarian symbol from the first day of January of the Gregorian calendar.

While exchanging pleasantries either in Korea or in China, one sometimes may be asked, “Which animal do you belong to?” Amusing! The question is asking what your animal sign is. The sophistication in this question is that is a way to figure out how old you are. By answering the animal symbol of the year, you are telling your age within a cycle of 12 years, and with a bit of common sense, the exact age can be deduced.

Therefore, if you belong to the Year of the Snake, in the year of 2013, you are either 12 years, 24 years, 36 years, 48 years, 60 years, 72 years, or 84 years old, according to the sexagenarian calculation of Chinese zodiac signs. More often, though, people ask for animal signs not to compute a person’s exact numerical age, but to simply know who is older among friends and acquaintances.

Originally, the Chinese zodiac was introduced to plan future action, and to relate an individual’s personality to animal symbols and its reputed attributes of each individual’s birth year. In earlier days, the birth year and the animal symbol used to have a significant impact on the minds of Korean parents in determining their off-spring’s marriageable candidates. Based on interpretations about the reputed attributes of each zodiac symbol, the parents or fortune-tellers would prognosticate the compatibility of potential marriage partners.

A cultural sidelight of these animal signs is that horoscopes have developed around each sign. A Chinese horoscope may predict that a person born in the Year of the Snake would have “meticulous,’’ “discreet,’’ “modest,’’ and “industrious’’ personalities. Although, in Christianity, the snake symbolizes the devil and Satan, in some modern religious movements, the snake is seen as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge. One Chinese Internet source lists this long personality interpretation for those who belong to the Snake sign ― “The one who is born in the year of Snake may be a deep thinker, wise, mystic, graceful, soft-spoken, sensual, creative, prudent, shrewd, elegant, cautious, responsible, calm, strong, constant, and purposeful. But, he or she can be loner, possessive, self-doubting and cold.”

Every year, some fortune-tellers in Korea prognosticate the country’s political future on the basis of their own interpretation of the horoscope. We will start to hear various prognostications as we near the beginning of the New Year. It will be quite interesting to hear those predictions and interpretations, given that the New Year will see the birth of a new administration that resulted from the presidential election just 10 days ago. Regardless of what the predictions are, best wishes for the new administration that is born in the Year of the Snake. I wish the new administration to be strong, wise, creative, and responsible!

The writer is a chair professor of the Catholic University of Daegu. He previously headed the Foreign News Division of the Korea Overseas Information Service. His email address is shinhyungook@hotmail.com. <The Korea Times/Shin Hyun-gook>