Gung Hee Fat Choy

Cute, with big eyes and a smile

Happy New Year! It is the Year of the Snake, which is a symbol of wisdom, intuition, transformation, cunning and stealth. Snakes are also linked to wealth, good luck, and prosperity.

The lunar New Year is the most celebrated holiday in Asia, yet the snake is a difficult animal to make appealing.

It’s the biggest holiday on the calendar, and a time to ring up big sales.

But it’s tough to build a marketing campaign around a coldblooded, sometimes venomous creature with no arms or legs...

The years of the Dog, Sheep and Rabbit offer huggability. The pig has Peppa Pig to lend it cuteness and star power. Even the rat can bask in the reflected glory of Mickey Mouse. Cows have eyelashes.

For designers, the only options are extreme: Present the snake as a different, cuter animal dressed up in a snake outfit. Or go all the way and give the snakes arms, legs or ears. Lose the forked tongue. And definitely tone down the scaliness.

One aspect of the lunar New Year that never seems to go out of style, regardless of one's feelings toward the zodiacal animal, is the receiving of money-filled red envelopes (Cantonese: lai see; Mandarin: hong bao). Now that our elder status has put us on the giving end of the red-paper custom, I have a partial answer to that age-old question: can money buy affection? The answer is yes, if one is content with a superficial, short-lived expression of the same.

Gung Hee Fat Choy!