Spring Festival is the New Year celebration of the traditional Chinese calendar, centered on the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar. Celebrations typically include preparations before the festival, reunions on Chinese New Year's Eve, and visits, rituals, and public entertainment during the new year period. It marks the annual transition from one year to the next and provides an important occasion for maintaining Family ties and passing on local customs. The Chinese expression guonian, or “celebrating the new year,” generally refers to this whole set of social practices for bidding farewell to the old year and welcoming the new, rather than to a single day. (ich.unesco.org)
Calendar and Festival Period
The Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar: its months follow the phases of the Moon, while solar terms and intercalary months align it with the seasonal changes reflected in the annual motion of the Sun. As a result, Spring Festival does not fall on a fixed date in the Gregorian calendar. It is distinct from the Beginning of Spring, one of the Twenty-Four Solar Terms. In 2018, for example, the Beginning of Spring fell on February 4, while the first day of the first lunar month fell on February 16. (hko.gov.hk)
The traditional festival period has no uniform starting or ending date across regions. In some places, preparations begin at the Laba Festival or the Little New Year. New Year's Eve and the first day of the first lunar month are the principal occasions, and celebrations may continue until the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of that month. This customary festival period should be distinguished from the officially designated public holiday. (beijing.gov.cn)
History and Names
Spring Festival customs did not emerge all at once in a single historical period. Instead, they developed gradually from traditions of celebrating the beginning of the year, making ritual offerings, and gathering with family. In ancient China, the beginning of the year changed with the calendar system in use. In 104 BCE, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty introduced the Taichu calendar, which established the first lunar month as the beginning of the year—an important milestone in the history of the lunar New Year. In antiquity, the first day of the first lunar month was also known as Yuanri, Zhengdan, and Yuandan, among other names. (beijing.gov.cn)
After the Xinhai Revolution, the Gregorian calendar became part of the state's system of dating. January 1 in that calendar was called Yuandan, while the traditional lunar New Year gradually became known as “Spring Festival” to distinguish the two. Administrative documents from 1914 already referred to the beginning of the lunar year as Spring Festival and provided for time off. The history of the festival's current name therefore should not simply be equated with the history of its customs. (beijing.gov.cn)
Preparations and Family Rituals
Preparations typically include cleaning the home, buying supplies for the new year, and preparing food. The date of the Little New Year varies by region, and some areas hold rituals honoring the Kitchen God during this period. Families also put up spring couplets, images of door gods, New Year prints, or paper-cut window decorations, and decorate their homes with lanterns and other ornaments. Spring couplets express good wishes through paired lines of text and are associated with Chinese Calligraphy and traditions of festive decoration. These objects both convey wishes for good fortune and create the festival's distinctive visual setting. (ihchina.cn)
The reunion dinner on New Year's Eve is an important form of family gathering. Family members eat and talk together and may stay up late to see in the new year. Once the new year begins, people pay New Year visits to elders, relatives, friends, and neighbors, exchanging good wishes. It is also common for elders to give younger family members red envelopes containing New Year gift money. Some families practice ancestor veneration, although the rituals, forms of participation, and importance attached to them vary by region and household. (ich.unesco.org)
Food and Festive Expression
Spring Festival food traditions vary considerably by region. In many parts of northern China, jiaozi dumplings are eaten as festive food, while many southern regions make nian gao, or New Year rice cakes. These foods carry symbolic associations with welcoming the new year and good fortune. However, “dumplings in the north, rice cakes in the south” is only a broad generalization and does not encompass the complexity of local food traditions. Nor is there a single nationwide standard for the dishes served at the reunion dinner. (ihchina.cn)
Spring Festival decorations, greetings, and performances connect everyday objects with wishes for good fortune. Spring couplets, paper-cut window decorations, lanterns, firecrackers, and fireworks all help create a festive atmosphere. They are not merely household items: they also become part of festival life through commercial production, sales, and public displays, reflecting the connections between folk crafts and commercial activity. (ihchina.cn)
Public Celebrations and Modern Changes
Spring Festival activities take place both within families and in communities and public spaces. Communities, cultural institutions, civic organizations, and performing arts groups organize celebrations, giving the festival the character of both a family gathering and an occasion for public social interaction. Within families, good wishes, gift-giving, and shared meals also reaffirm Kinship ties during the annual celebrations. (ich.unesco.org)
Modern media have expanded the ways people celebrate the new year. On February 12, 1983, Chinese New Year's Eve, China Central Television broadcast its first live Spring Festival Gala. Watching the gala subsequently became part of some families' New Year's Eve activities. Festival traditions are therefore not static: established customs may be preserved or adapted, and they may coexist with newer forms such as television programs. (tv.cctv.com)
Global Reach and Cultural Heritage
Spring Festival traditions also continue in overseas Chinese communities, where they combine with local public celebrations. In international usage, “Lunar New Year” can also refer to New Year festivals in societies such as Vietnam and Korea. These festivals have calendrical and customary connections with China's Spring Festival, but their names, foods, and ritual traditions are not identical. (apnews.com)
In 2024, “Spring festival, social practices of the Chinese people in celebration of traditional new year” was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The inscription emphasizes the social practices, ritual knowledge, decorative crafts, and performance skills associated with Spring Festival. These traditions are passed on through everyday teaching within families and communities, school Education, and master–apprentice training. (ich.unesco.org)