Chinese New Year or the Spring Festival (see also § Names) is a festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. Marking the end of winter and the beginning of spring, observances traditionally take 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 Chinese New Year begins on the new moon that appears between 21 January and 20 February.[a]

Chinese New Year is one of the most important holidays in Chinese culture. It has influenced similar celebrations in other cultures, commonly referred to collectively as Lunar New Year, such as the Losar of Tibet, the Tết of Vietnam, the Korean New Year, and the Ryukyu New Year.[3][4][5] It is also celebrated worldwide in regions and countries that house significant Overseas Chinese or Sinophone populations, especially in Southeast Asia. These include Singapore,[6] Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar,[7] the Philippines,[8] Thailand, and Vietnam. It is also prominent beyond Asia, especially in Australia, Canada, France, Mauritius,[9] New Zealand, Peru,[10] South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as in many European countries.[11][12][13]

The Chinese New Year is associated with several myths and customs. The festival was traditionally a time to honour deities as well as ancestors.[14] Within China, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the New Year vary widely,[15] and the evening preceding the New Year's Day is frequently regarded as an occasion for Chinese families to gather for the annual reunion dinner. It is also a tradition 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 practiced custom is the decoration of windows and doors with red paper-cuts and couplets. Popular themes among these paper-cuts and couplets include good fortune or happiness, wealth, and longevity. Other activities include lighting firecrackers and giving money in red envelopes.

Names
See also: Lunar New Year
In Chinese, the festival is commonly known as the "Spring Festival" (traditional Chinese: 春節; simplified Chinese: 春节; pinyin: Chūnjié),[16] as the spring season in the lunisolar calendar traditionally starts with lichun, the first of the twenty-four solar terms which the festival celebrates around the time of the Chinese New Year.[17] The name was first proposed in 1914 by Yuan Shikai, who was at the time the interim president of the Republic of China.[18] 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".[19]

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.[20] 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.[20]

Dates in Chinese lunisolar calendar
See also: Chinese calendar

The largest Chinese New Year parade outside Asia, in Chinatown, Manhattan

Traditional paper cutting with the character 春 ('spring'))

Chinese New Year decorations along New Bridge Road in Singapore

Chinese New Year eve in Meizhou on 8 February 2005
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[b]).[21][2] In more than 96 percent of years, the Chinese New Year is the closest new moon to the beginning of spring (lichun) according to the calendar. In the Gregorian calendar, the Chinese New Year occurs on the new moon that falls between 21 January and 20 February.[22]