Red Egg and Ginger Party: First Month Birthday

Traditionally,  Chinese people don't celebrate baby showers. Instead, we celebrate the 1st Month and the 100 Days of the baby.

The first month birthday is called the FULL MOON BIRTHDAY or the RED EGG AND GINGER PARTY.

In the olden days, because of the high infant mortality rate, the couple only celebrated and announced the birth of their child after 30 days. The mother would send odd number of red eggs to announce a boy and even to announce the birth of a girl.

Nowadays, the Red Egg and Ginger party is celebrated with a small banquet, usually in a Chinese restaurant. The 30th day marks the end of the mother's confinement and the  baby is introduced to the rest of the relatives. But it's not really strict and you can celebrate anytime between the 30th day or the 100th day.

Filipino-Chinese don't celebrate this tradition but we do have something similar called MWA GE. The family celebrates with  a simple dinner and after the mwa-ge the baby can go out of the house. 

Ideally, the mother and the baby should observe the 30-day quarantine period because of their weak immune systems. So it is advised that there should be no visitors within the first 30 days or during the Ge Lai period.

The Red Egg tradition is being followed by my relatives in Hong Kong and friends in Singapore. I decided this to follow this tradition because I love celebrating just about anything!

I prepared red eggs by dying hard boiled eggs using a red food coloring.

Red eggs symbolize the renewal of life. Ginger represents "hotness" or yang which is an important element in the mother's post partum recovery. You can serve your red eggs with pickled ginger, fresh ginger or even ginger candies! 

Since I'm pretty sure no one will enjoy eating red hard boiled eggs and ginger, I ordered cookies egg-shaped cookies from Little Whisk (@thelittlewhisk). It has a monkey on it because my daughter was born under this zodiac. Monkeys are said to very clever people. Mana sa ina.

I ordered a cake too. What's a party without a cake right?!

Even our juice was red!

We also ordered Chinese food from UNO. 

And because I'm chaka, I asked my husband to decorate the place even if we were not really expecting visitors! 

Charan! My mini dessert table.

Bonggels!

We didn't really have any guests because I'm still here at my in-laws house.  G's first month party also fell on a weekday and traffic to is hell. It'd be a nightmare for my brother and friends to go all the way to New Manila.

Nevertheless, I had fun!

How about you? How did you celebrate your baby's first month birthday?

Very grateful,

L