I went to a red egg party last week, which JL reminds me I haven't blogged on. Since it really was kinda great, let me tell you about it.

A red egg party is traditionally thrown for a Chinese baby at his or her one-month birthday. Before that, the baby doesn't go out of the house and, significantly, doesn't have a name. There are a lot of reasons for this system, the most important two probably being the fragility of a newborn's immune system, and the institutionalization of a reluctance to get your heart broken by committing to a baby in a culture where in past centuries infant mortality rates have been very high. (Friends of mine had a baby very prematurely last fall. A baby nurse in the preemie ward told us parents of very tiny preemies often don't name them until their chances of survival approach at least even. Same reason.) Anyway, it's a Chinese tradition to have this sort of coming-out party for the baby, and to serve hard-boiled eggs dyed red for luck.

Now, the baby whose party I went to is a little over a year old. She's recently adopted from China, the second adopted daughter of two Americans: a nice Jewish doctor and his ABC (American-born Chinese) wife. So she's a little long in the tooth for a red egg party, just by virtue of the fact that she HAS teeth. Nevertheless, at a lovely inn in rural New Jersey on a rainy Sunday afternoon, about a hundred and fifty people came together to welcome her into the family. She was given a Chinese and a Hebrew name, and the parents had written a ceremony which involved the big sister, lots of their relations and friends, and two rabbis. We all recited some prayers for her. Her names were explained, along with their relationships to her big sister's Chinese and Hebrew names, and the other names in their family. The big sister, all of five years old, read a little speech she'd written about her new sister. She needed her father's help to sound out some of the words. The food was absolutely terrific, both Chinese (steamed dumplings, spring rolls, chow fun, and of course red eggs) and Jewish (lox, whitefish, and the trimmings). Wine flowed freely and the noise level kept rising as people caught up with old friends or got to know each other and found things to talk about, and the kids raced around showing off paper cut-out hats and masks made for them by a smiling Chinese craftsman hired for the occasion. I just barely caught the 6-something train back to NY, and spent the hour long ride, exhausted, looking out the window, feeling pretty damn good.