Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, marks the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. It is one of the most important holidays in Chinese culture. Marking the end of winter and the beginning of spring, this festival takes place from Chinese New Year's Eve (the evening preceding the first day of the year) to the Lantern Festival, held on the 15th day of the year. The first day of the Chinese New Year falls on the new moon that appears between 21 January and 20 February.
The Chinese New Year is associated with several myths and customs. The festival was traditionally a time to honour deities and ancestors. Throughout China, different regions celebrate the New Year with distinct local customs and traditions. Chinese New Year's Eve is an occasion for Chinese families to gather for the annual reunion dinner. Traditionally, every family would thoroughly clean their house, symbolically sweeping away any ill fortune to make way for incoming good luck. Windows and doors may be decorated with red paper-cuts and couplets representing themes such as good fortune, happiness, wealth, and longevity. Other activities include lighting firecrackers and giving money in red envelopes.
Chinese New Year is also celebrated worldwide in regions and countries with significant overseas Chinese or Sinophone populations, especially in Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand. It is also prominent beyond Asia, especially in Australia, Canada, France, Mauritius, New Zealand, Peru, South Africa, the United Kingdom, as well as in many other European countries, and the United States. Chinese New Year has influenced celebrations, commonly referred to collectively as Lunar New Year, in other cultures, such as the Losar of Tibet, the Tết of Vietnam, the Seollal of Korea, and the Ryukyu New Year (Okinawan: Sjoogwaci).
Names
In Chinese, the festival is commonly known as the "Spring Festival" (), as the spring season in the lunisolar calendar traditionally starts with , the first of the twenty-four solar terms that the festival celebrates around the time of the Chinese New Year. The name was first proposed in 1914 by Yuan Shikai, who was the interim president of the Republic of China. The official usage of the name "Spring Festival" was retained by the government of the People's Republic of China, but the government of the Republic of China based in Taiwan has since adopted the name "Traditional Chinese New Year".
The festival is also called "Lunar New Year" in English, despite the traditional Chinese calendar being lunisolar and not lunar. However, "Chinese New Year" is still a commonly used translation for people of non-Chinese backgrounds. Along with the Han Chinese inside and outside of Greater China, as many as 29 of the 55 ethnic minority groups in China also celebrate Chinese New Year. Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines celebrate it as an official festival.
In recent years, the English translation of the Spring Festival has sparked controversy. In many countries outside China, "Lunar New Year" is considered a more inclusive name and has been widely used for years; however, some Chinese public opinion views "Lunar New Year" as an act of "De-Sinicization". In 2025, the Chinese tea brand CHAGEE translated the Spring Festival as "Lunar New Year", which caused controversy. On January 24, 2025, CHAGEE urgently changed its copy and apologized.
Dates in the Chinese lunisolar calendar
The Chinese calendar defines the lunisolar month containing the winter solstice as the eleventh month, meaning that Chinese New Year usually falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice (rarely the third, if an intercalary month occurs). In more than 96 percent of years, the Chinese New Year is the closest new moon to the beginning of spring () according to the calendar. In the Gregorian calendar, Chinese New Year occurs on the new moon that falls between 21 January and 20 February.
Gregorian Date Animal
Mythology
According to legend, Chinese New Year started with combating a mythical beast called the Nian (a beast that lives under the sea or in the mountains that looks like a lion with horns) during the annual Spring Festival. The Nian would eat villagers, especially children, in the middle of the night. One year, all the villagers decided to hide from the beast. An older man appeared before the villagers and said that he would stay the night and would get revenge on the Nian. The old man put up red papers and set off firecrackers. The day after, the villagers came back to their town and saw that nothing had been destroyed. They assumed that the old man was a deity who had come to save them. The villagers then understood that the Nian was afraid of the colour red and loud noises. As the New Year approached, the tradition grew: villagers wore red clothing, hung red lanterns and spring scrolls on windows and doors, and used firecrackers and drums to frighten away the Nian. From then on, the Nian never came to the village again. The Nian was eventually captured by Hongjun Laozu, an ancient Taoist monk.
History
Before the new year celebration was established, ancient Chinese gathered and celebrated the end of the harvest in autumn. However, this was not the Mid-Autumn Festival, during which the Chinese gathered with family to worship the Moon. In the Classic of Poetry, a poem written during the Western Zhou period (1046 BC – 771 BC) by an anonymous farmer, described the traditions of celebrating the 10th month of the ancient solar calendar, which was in autumn. The poem describes people cleaning millet stacks, offering mijiu (rice wine) to guests, slaughtering lambs, visiting their master's home, toasting him, and expressing wishes for longevity together. The 10th month celebration is believed to be one of the prototypes of Chinese New Year. The records of the first Chinese New Year celebration can be traced to the Warring States period (475 – 221 BC). In the , in the Qin state, an exorcism ritual to expel illness, called "Big Nuo", was recorded as being carried out on the last day of the year. Later, Qin unified China, and the Qin dynasty was founded; and the ritual spread. It evolved into the practice of cleaning one's house thoroughly in the days preceding the Chinese New Year.
The first mention of celebrating the start of a new year was recorded during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD). In the book (), written by the Eastern Han agronomist Cui Shi (崔寔), such a celebration was described: "The starting day of the first month is called Zheng Ri. I bring my wife and children to worship ancestors and commemorate my father." Later, he wrote: "Children, wife, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren all serve pepper wine to their parents, make their toast, and wish their parents good health. It's a thriving view." The practice of worshipping ancestors on New Year's Eve is maintained by Chinese people to this day.
Han Chinese also started the custom of visiting acquaintances' homes and wishing each other a happy new year. In Book of the Later Han, volume 27, a county officer was recorded as going to his prefect's house with a government secretary, toasting the prefect, and praising the prefect's merit.
During the Jin dynasty (266–420), people started the New Year's Eve tradition of all-night revelry called (). It was described in an article by Zhou Chu, a general of the Western Jin, (, "Notes on Local Conditions"): "At the ending of a year, people gift and wish each other, calling it (, 'time for gifts'); people invited others with drinks and food, calling it (, 'sending off the year'); on New Year's Eve, people stayed up all night until sunrise, calling it (, 'guard the year')." The article used the phrase () to indicate New Year's Eve—a phrase still used today.
A book of the Northern and Southern dynasties, , describes the practice of firing bamboo in the early morning of New Year's Day, a New Year's tradition of the ancient Chinese. Poet and chancellor of the Tang dynasty, Lai Gu, also described this tradition in his poem Early Spring (): "", meaning "Another new year just started as a half-opening paper, and the family gathered around the dust of exploded bamboo poles." The practice was used by ancient Chinese people to scare away evil spirits, since bamboo would noisily crack and explode from being fired.
During the Tang dynasty, people established the custom of sending (, "New Year's greetings"), New Year's greeting cards. It is said that the custom was started by Emperor Taizong of Tang. The emperor wrote "" ("whole nation celebrates together") on gold leaves and sent them to his ministers. Word of the emperor's gesture spread, and later it became the custom of people in general, who used Xuan paper instead of gold leaves. Another theory is that was derived from the Han dynasty's name tag, (, "door opening"). As imperial examinations became essential and reached their heyday under the Tang dynasty, candidates curried favour to become pupils of respected teachers and to get recommendation letters. After obtaining good examination marks, a pupil went to the teacher's home with a to convey their gratitude. Eventually, became a symbol of good luck, and people started sending them to friends on New Year's Day, calling them by a new name, .
The (Spring Couplets) was written by Meng Chang, an emperor of the Later Shu (935–965 AD), during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period："" ("Enjoying past legacies in the new year, the holiday foreseeing the long-lasting spring"). As described by Song dynasty official Zhang Tangying in his book , Volume 2, on the day of New Year's Eve the emperor ordered the scholar Xin Yinxun to write the couplets on peach wood and hang them on the emperor's bedroom door. It is believed that placing the couplets on the door to the home in the days preceding the new year was widespread during the Song dynasty. The famous Northern Song politician, littérateur, philosopher, and poet Wang Anshi recorded the custom in his poem "" ("New Year's Day").
The poem Yuan Ri () also includes the word bao zhu (, "exploding bamboo"), which is believed to be a reference to firecrackers, instead of the previous tradition of firing bamboo, both of which are called the same in the Chinese language. After gunpowder was invented in the Tang dynasty and widely used under the Song dynasty, people modified the tradition of firing bamboo by filling the bamboo pole with gunpowder, which made for louder explosions. Later, under the Song, people discarded the bamboo and started to use paper to wrap the gunpowder in cylinders, in imitation of the bamboo. The firecracker was still called bao zhu (), thus equating the new and old traditions. It is also recorded that people linked the firecrackers with hemp rope and created the bian pao (, "gunpowder whip") in the Song dynasty. Both bao zhu () and bian pao () are still used today to celebrate the Chinese New Year and other festive occasions.
It was also during the Song dynasty that people started to give money to children in celebration of a new year. The money was called sui nian qian (, "money based on age"). In the chapter, "Ending of a Year" () in Wulin jiushi (), concubines of the emperor prepared a hundred and twenty coins for princes and princesses to wish them longevity.
New Year's celebrations continued under the Yuan dynasty, when people also gave nian gao (, "year cakes") to relatives.