Chinese-speaking people across the world are busy preparing to celebrate the Lunar New Year, which this year falls on Jan. 25. The festival marks the beginning of the Year of the Rat. Chinese Christians, of course, are part of the celebrations, composing and adapting the parallel sentences of greetings typical of the festival.

The expression “parallel sentences” needs a bit of explanation. Chinese alphabets allow the flexibility of writing sentences from top to bottom or left to right. During the Lunar New Year, the Chinese have a tradition of writing two-sentence greetings on two strips of paper, placed vertically on either side of a statue, picture or door. These couplets of greetings came to be known as parallel sentences.

Christians adapt these greetings and also compose their own. Sometimes they may vary among different denominations. In order to understand these sentences, we must return to the context in which these sentences are written. These greetings of four to 10 characters evoke a story, an affirmation of wisdom, or a blessing, corresponding to each other. Concise and poetic, their form and content are meant to reflect a certain beauty. Each sentence sounds like a maxim that highlights an idea; it translates and transports them. The parallel sentences are found in all regions and religious groups of the Chinese world.