This festival celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. This can also be called the Spring Festival or Lunar New Year. This is a 16 day festival from New Year’s Eve to the 15th day which is the lantern festival. The first day of Chinese New Year begins on the new moon that appears between 21st January and 20th February. There are 12 different animals that correspond to each year; Snake, Horse, Goat, Money, Rooster, Dog, Pig, Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit and Dragon. There are many customs associated with the holiday. On New Year’s Eve, Chinese families gather for the annual reunion dinner. It is traditional for every family to thoroughly clean their house in order to sweep away an ill-fortune and to make way for the incoming good luck. Another custom is the decoration of windows and doors with red paper-cuts and couplets, with themes of these including good fortune or happiness, wealth and longevity. Other festivities include lighting firecrackers and giving money in red paper envelopes.
In 2024 it is the year of the Wood Dragon beginning on 10th February. The Wood Dragon year 2024, when combined with the nourishing Wood element, will bring evolution, improvement, and abundance; it is the perfect time for rejuvenated beginnings and setting the foundation for long-term success.
Day 0 (New Year’s Eve)
This day is usually celebrated with a dinner feast, consisting of special meats as a main course and an offering for the New Year. Some families visit local temples hours before midnight to pray for success by lighting the first incense of the year. Many households parties, while firecrackers are lit to ward off evil spirits. The doors to the house are sealed and not reopened until drawn in a ritual in a ritual called “opening the door of fortune”. The tradition of staying up late on this day is known as shousui, it is still practiced and believed to add to parental longevity.
Day 1 (New Year’s Day)
This day is known as the “Spring Festival” and is for the welcoming of the deities of the heavens and Earth on midnight. It is a tradition to light fireworks, burn bamboo sticks and firecrackers, and do lion dance troupes to ward off evil spirits. Actions like lighting fires and using knives are considered taboo, so any cooking is done the day before. Other actions like sweeping, swearing and breaking dinnerware are also considered taboo. Other traditions include house gatherings with families, especially the elders and families to the oldest and most senior members of their extended families, as well as trading Mandarin oranges as a courtesy to symbolise wealth and good luck. Those members of the family who are married also give red envelopes containing cash as a form of blessing and to suppress both the ageing and challenges that were associated with the coming year to junior members of the family. Business managers may also give out bonuses, while the money could ending in 8 to mean prosperity. Packets with no money or odd or unlucky numbers are not allowed due to bad luck, with the number 4 is especially unlucky as it means death.
Day 2 (Year’s Beginning)
This day sees married daughters visiting their birth parents, relatives and close friends, often renewing family ties and relationships. It also sees people offering money and sacrifices to the God of Wealth to symbolise a rewarding time after hardship the previous year.
Day 3 (Red Mouth)
Rural villagers continue the tradition of burning paper offerings over trash fires. Today is considered unlucky to have guests or go visiting. It is also considered a propitious day to visit the temple of the God of Wealth and have one future’s told.
Day 4
Corporate Spring Dinners kick off and business returns to normal.
Day 5 (God of Wealth’s Birthday)
In northern China, people eat jiaozi, or dumplings, in the morning. It is also common for people to shoot off firecrackers to get Guan Yu’s attention, ensuring his favour and good fortune for the new year.
Day 6 (Horse’s Day)
People drive away the Ghost of Poverty by throwing out the garbage stored up during the festival, reflecting the general desire of the Chinese people to ring out the old and ring in the new, to send away the previous poverty and hardship and to usher in the good life of the New Year.
Day 7 (Renri)
This is the day when everyone grows one year older.
Day 8
Another family dinner is held to celebrate the eve of the birth of the Jade Emperor, the ruler of heaven. People normally return to work by now, therefore the owners will hots a lunch or dinner with their employees, thanking them for their hard work for the year.
Day 9 (Birthday of the Jade Emperor of Heaven)
Many people offer prayer in the Taoist Pantheon as thanks or gratitude. Incense, tea, fruit, vegetarian food or roast pig, and gold paper, are served as a customary protocol for paying respect to an honoured person.
Day 10
The birthday of Jade Emperor is celebrated.
Day 15 (Lantern Festival)
The Lantern Festival is celebrated on the 15th day of the 1st month in the lunisolar Chinese calendar, during the full moon. It marks the final day of the traditional Chinese New Year celebrations. During the festival, children go out at night carrying paper lanterns and solve riddles on lanterns, which are always red to symbolise good fortune. Rice dumplings or tangyuan, a sweet glutinous rice ball brewed in a soup, are eaten this day. Candles are lit outside houses as a way to guide wayward spirits home.
Holidays & Special Events 