I have, in my 30 years on this earth, explored them all.

That leaves behind a very narrow slice of shirt options you’ll like enough to continue wearing long after the festivities are over. Red polos are out, because you don’t want to spend the day being called “Tiger Woods” by your hilarious cousin ditto red T-shirts (Jack White) and red sweaters (Ken Bone). A solid red dress shirt will make you look like a TGI Fridays magician. Unlike white or blue, red just isn’t a universally flattering color-it’s aggressive and garish, the opposite of neutral. There’s a reason that the only people who wear red shirts with any regularity are casino pit bosses, Jake from State Farm, and expendable extras on Star Trek.

(We’re an oddly pun-centric culture.) But the most important CNY tradition of all, at least in my household, is donning a brand-new red shirt on the first day-red symbolizing good fortune, and the newness symbolizing something my mom has probably explained to me a half-dozen times and will be annoyed by when she reads this and sees that I’ve forgotten.Īs far back as I can remember, this custom has been something of a double-edged sword: on the one hand, I welcome any and all excuses to shop on the other, it is much harder than you’d think to find a red shirt that’s actually worth wearing. High stakes! There’s a Vegas buffet’s worth of auspicious foods to consume: the Chinese word for “leek” sounds a lot like the word for “calculating,” so the more leeks you eat, the more money you’ll have to count the word for “prawn” is har, so they’ll bring you plenty of laughs-as in, like, har-har-har!-in the months ahead. The longer you stay up past midnight on New Year’s Eve, for instance, the longer your parents will stay alive.

Chinese New Year, which begins this Friday, is sort of like the Superstition Super Bowl.

Red button down dress shirt