Chinese New Year Reunion Dinners/Lunches - Are We Missing the Real Gist of It?

Before you continue to read this posting, first take about 5 minutes (or less if your mind thinks fast) and ponder on this: If you're a Chinese (and even if you're not, you're also elligible to ponder on this), what is the meaning and purpose of a Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner/Lunch to you?

For me, a CNY Reunion Dinner/Lunch is a time for a family to get together, to have a meal together, to catch up, to re-connect, especially if members of the family are geographically separated or have not been in touch regularly, to usher in the New Year together as a family as we say goodbye to the previous year. For me, it has always been about the FAMILY and REUNION.

However, what we have experienced this CNY (2009) has made us ponder: does being a Chinese, and the fact that it's a CNY Reunion Dinner/Lunch, makes it COMPULSORY for the meal to be a CHINESE MEAL, in a CHINESE RESTAURANT, in a CHINESE SETTING?

Before we debate on this, let's talk about facts that we all mostly agree on: FACT 1: Almost ALL Chinese restaurants will raise their food prices during Chinese New Year (and let's not argue over this, different viewpoints have been raised, e.g. they are working while the rest of us are enjoying, etc.), FACT 2: Other non-Chinese restaurants will most likely maintain similar food prices during CNY and FACT 3: Other non-Chinese restaurants might throw in additional goodies in their menu to tie in with CNY (e.g. CNY set lunches, etc.).

Now here's the situation: would it make sense to pay RM200 for a CNY dinner for 4 people and be forced to wait almost an hour before you are actually even served with your meal (due to the insane crowd size) for dishes that you know fully well you can order in any other non-CNY-related days for a much much cheaper price (and minus the insane waiting period), or wouldn't tbe nearby KFC with virtually no crowd and offering the very same menu and same prices as yesterday and tomorrow offer a more reasonable option especially if it costs around RM50 for a meal for 4 people???

Worst still, we have asked such a question before (why pay so much when we can eat at other places?) and an answer that we got was: During Chinese New Year of course we eat Chinese food!

So now my question is: was there ever a rule that says Chinese must eat Chinese food during CNY? OK, like all Chinese customs, probably if we ask the elders, they will say that's how it has been done from yesteryears all the way till now, and that's probably true, else, it won't be a custom. But my argument is this: Did anyone consider that years ago, centuries ago, you probably would have a difficult time finding a non-Chinese restaurant in China serving non-Chinese food as compared to now, in the age of globalization?

Is it wrong to have a Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner in KFC, in Kayu Nasi Kandar? Should we blindly offer to pay so so much more and be forced to accept less-than-ideal service standards just so that we can stick to what we perceive is a custom that we must and should follow, without first understanding and accepting the meaning of what we are celebrating and what makes the environment of centuries ago different from what it is now?