Lunar New Year is essentially Chinese New Year. It is the Chinese festival that celebrates the new year.
Let’s dive into some unknown and facts about this holiday.
- Chinese New Year is also referred to as Lunar New Year
- It is the Chinese festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional Chinese calendar
- The festival is usually referred to as the Spring Festival in mainland China
- And is one of several Lunar New Years in Asia
- Observances traditionally take place from the evening preceding the first day of the year to the Lantern Festival
- It is held on the 15th day of the year
- The first day of Chinese New Year begins on the new moon that appears between 21 January and 20 February
- In 2020, the first day of the Chinese New Year will be on Saturday, 25 January, initiating the Year of the Rat
- Chinese New Year is a major holiday in China
- It has strongly influenced Lunar new year celebrations of China’s neighbouring cultures
- Including the Korean New Year (seol), the Tết of Vietnam, and the Losar of Tibet
- It is also celebrated worldwide in regions and countries with significant Overseas Chinese or Sinophone populations
- Including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Brunei, the Philippines, and Mauritius
- As well as many in North America and Europe
- Chinese New Year is associated with several myths and customs
- The festival was traditionally a time to honour deities as well as ancestors
- Within China, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the New Year vary widely
- The evening preceding Chinese New Year’s Day is frequently regarded as an occasion for Chinese families to gather for the annual reunion dinner
- It is also traditional for every family to thoroughly clean their house, in order to sweep away any ill-fortune and to make way for incoming good luck
- Another custom is the decoration of windows and doors with red paper-cuts and couplets
- Popular themes among these paper-cuts and couplets include that of good fortune or happiness, wealth, and longevity
- Other activities include lighting firecrackers and giving money in red paper envelopes
- For the northern regions of China, dumplings are featured prominently in meals celebrating the festival
- It often serves as the first meal of the year either at midnight or as breakfast of the first day
- According to tales and legends, the beginning of the Chinese New Year started with a mythical beast called the Nian 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 go hide from the beast
- An old man, Yanhuang, appeared before the villagers went into hiding and said that he would stay the night, and would get revenge on the Nian
- All the villagers thought he was insane
- The old man put red papers up 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 came to save them
- The villagers then understood that Yanhuang had discovered that the Nian was afraid of the color red and loud noises
- So the tradition grew that when New Year was approaching, the villagers would wear red clothes, hang red lanterns, and red spring scrolls on windows and doors
- People also used firecrackers to frighten away the Nian
- From then on, Nian never came to the village again
- The Nian was eventually captured by Hongjun Laozu, an ancient Taoist monk
- After that, Nian retreated to a nearby mountain
- The name of the mountain has long been lost over the years
- There is also a saying that the beast is “Xi”, rather than Nian
- Spring Festival included New Year’s Eve and New Year
- Xi is a kind of faint monster, and Nian is not related to the animal beasts in terms of meaning, it is more like a mature harvest
- There is no record of the beast in the ancient texts
- It is only in Chinese folklore. The word “Nian” is composed of the words “he” and “Qian”
- It means that the grain is rich and the harvest is good
- The farmers review the harvest at the end of the year and are also full of expectations for the coming year
- According to Chinese historical documents, since the beginning of the era, people have celebrated the harvest in the New Year and welcomed the new folk customs
- Later, they gradually became an established traditional festival
- While Spring Festival has since become the official name of Chinese New Year, the Chinese outside mainland China still prefer to call it Lunar New Year
- “Chinese New Year” is a popular and convenient translation for people of non-Chinese cultural backgrounds
- Along with the Han Chinese in and outside China, as many as 29 of the 55 ethnic minority groups in China also celebrate Chinese New Year
- Korea, Brunei, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia celebrate it as an official festival
- During the festival, people around China will prepare different gourmet for families and guests
- Influenced by the flourished cultures, foods from different places look and taste totally different
- Among them, the most well-known ones are dumplings from northern China and Tangyuan from southern China
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