Chinese New Year: Spring Festival customs and greetings

Chinese New Year, known in China as the Spring Festival (春节, Chūnjié), falls on the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar. That calendar is lunisolar: it combines the phases of the Moon with the solar year. This is why the festival has no fixed date in the Gregorian calendar: it falls on a new moon between January 21 and February 20.

The usual rule is that New Year's Day is the second new moon after the winter solstice, or more rarely the third, when the year contains an intercalary (leap) month. The table below shows how much the date shifts from one year to the next.

The festival is not a single day. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, it lasts fifteen days, from the new moon of the first month to the full moon, and ends with the Lantern Festival (元宵节).

In everyday Chinese, people simply say 过年 (guònián), "to pass the year". UNESCO uses the same word for the whole cycle of celebrations: welcoming the new year, praying for good fortune, celebrating family reunions and fostering harmony in the community.

In the past, the first day of the lunar year was not called the "Spring Festival". Its name was 元旦 (Yuándàn), the word that now means January 1. The term 春节 referred instead to the beginning of spring in the cycle of the twenty-four solar terms.

The change came with the Republic. In 1912 the new government adopted the Gregorian calendar and made January 1 the official New Year's Day. In January 1914, the Ministry of the Interior of the Beijing government proposed to President Yuan Shikai (袁世凯) that the first day of the lunar year be renamed the "Spring Festival"; the same memorandum suggested calling the Dragon Boat Festival the "Summer Festival", the Mid-Autumn Festival the "Autumn Festival" and the winter solstice the "Winter Festival". Yuan Shikai approved the new name for the lunar New Year: 春节 became official, and 元旦 moved to January 1.

The People's Republic kept this division. On September 27, 1949, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference adopted the Gregorian calendar. To tell the two New Years apart, and because the solar term "Beginning of Spring" (立春) falls close to the lunar New Year, the first day of the first month kept the name 春节 and January 1 the name 元旦. In December 1949, a holiday regulation gave one day off for 元旦 and three for 春节.

Today, 元旦 still means January 1, while 春节 or 过年 means the lunar New Year.

According to UNESCO's description, the days before the festival are spent cleaning the house, stocking up on provisions and preparing food. Then the doors are decorated.

Spring couplets (春联, chūnlián) are two parallel lines pasted on either side of the door. One of their ancestors is the "peach-wood charm" (桃符, táofú): a small board of peach wood bearing the names of two door-guardian gods (or their images painted on paper), hung at the entrance to bring blessings and keep misfortune away. According to the History of Song (宋史), Meng Chang (孟昶), ruler of the Later Shu, wrote the couplet "新年纳余庆，嘉节号长春" on such a board himself on the eve of the last New Year of his reign, shortly before his kingdom fell in 965. The People's Daily describes it as the earliest spring couplet recorded in writing, while noting that Dunhuang manuscripts preserve Tang-dynasty door inscriptions for the beginning of spring. Under the Ming, couplets grew in importance; by the late Ming and early Qing they had replaced the peach-wood boards as the main way of writing New Year wishes.

People also paste up the character 福 (fú, "good fortune"), sometimes upside down. The reason is a pun: 倒 (dào, "upside down") and 到 (dào, "to arrive") sound the same, so "the 福 is upside down" (福倒了) sounds like "good fortune has arrived" (福到了).

The last evening of the lunar year, 除夕 (chúxī), is the high point of the festival. According to UNESCO, families eat dinner together and then stay up late to welcome the new year.

This dinner is called 年夜饭 (niányèfàn), "the meal of the year's night", or 团圆饭 (tuányuánfàn), "the reunion meal". It is the reason so many people travel back to their home towns before the festival. The watch that follows is called 守岁 (shǒusuì), "keeping watch over the year": after dinner, people stay up to see the last night of the old year through to the first day of the new one.

The menu varies from region to region, but several dishes come back for what they stand for, often thanks to a pun:

• in the north, people make dumplings (饺子, jiǎozi); Chinese sources link the dish to the phrase 更岁交子, which refers to the old year turning into the new, and compare their shape to silver ingots (元宝);

• people also eat niangao (年糕, niángāo, "year cake"), whose name sounds like 年高, "higher every year";

• fish (鱼, yú) sounds like 余 (yú, "surplus"), so it is served to wish 年年有余, "abundance year after year".

Firecrackers (爆竹, bàozhú, literally "bursting bamboo"; also 鞭炮, biānpào) are part of the sound of New Year. Originally, people simply threw bamboo stems into a fire: the air heated inside the joints made them burst with a bang, long before gunpowder firecrackers. In the 6th century, under the Liang dynasty, Zong Lin's (宗懔) Record of the Seasons of Jingchu (荆楚岁时记) reports that on the first day of the year people rise at cockcrow and burst "bamboo" in front of the courtyard to drive away mountain demons (山臊) and evil spirits.

Today, to reduce accidents and pollution, many Chinese cities have restricted or banned firecrackers. In recent years several have allowed them again at set times or in set places; in late 2025, Shanxi province repealed its blanket ban.

A widespread legend explains all the noise. Nian (年, the same word as "year") was a beast that devoured people at New Year; because it feared the colour red, loud noise and fire, people pasted red paper on their doors, kept lanterns burning all night and set off firecrackers to scare it away.

This is a folk tale, not an ancient tradition: no ancient text mentions the beast, and the oldest known written versions date from the 20th century. Chinese researchers trace the first one to an article by the Shanghai writer Sun Yusheng (孙玉声), published in a Shanghai newspaper on January 17, 1933.

During the festival people wear new clothes, and from the first day they go round offering New Year wishes: this is 拜年 (bàinián). UNESCO describes these visits to elders, relatives, friends and neighbours, along with offerings to heaven, earth and the ancestors. In the morning, the younger generation greets the elders first, wishing them good health and a long life; the elders give them money in return.

This money, slipped into a red envelope (红包, hóngbāo), is called 压岁钱 (yāsuìqián). A folk legend explains the name: a demon called 祟 (suì) would come on New Year's Eve to touch the heads of sleeping children, until coins wrapped in red paper under a pillow scared it off. "Money against the 祟" (压祟钱) is said to have become, through a pun, "year money" (压岁钱). Since January 2014, WeChat has also let people send digital red envelopes, which can be shared out in a group chat.

A few set phrases cover the greetings. On the first morning, people say 过年好! ("Happy New Year!"); with friends and elders they add 恭喜发财 ("wishing you prosperity"), 万事如意 ("may everything go as you wish"), 身体健康 ("good health") or 心想事成 ("may your wishes come true"). And there is always the simple 新年快乐 ("Happy New Year").

Since February 12, 1983, China Central Television (CCTV) has broadcast the Spring Festival Gala, 春晚 (Chūnwǎn), live every New Year's Eve: a long variety show of songs, dances and comedy.

Going home for the reunion dinner creates, every year, the New Year travel season, 春运 (chūnyùn), which lasts forty days. In 2026, from February 2 to March 13, about 9.4 billion inter-regional trips were counted (each journey is counted, not each traveller), a record. Cars have taken a growing share since 2012, when motorways became toll-free for small vehicles during the major holidays.

On December 4, 2024, meeting in Asunción, Paraguay, for its 19th session, UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee inscribed "Spring festival, social practices of the Chinese people in celebration of traditional new year" on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This brought China's total to 44 elements on UNESCO's lists. UNESCO notes that this knowledge is passed on within families and communities, and also through the school system. A year earlier, on December 22, 2023, the UN General Assembly had made the Lunar New Year a "floating" holiday for UN staff.

The festival closes on the 15th day of the year, at the full moon, with the Lantern Festival (元宵节): that night, colourful lanterns light up houses and traditional foods are served.