The vibrant traditions and 15-day celebration of Lunar New Year 2025

On January 29, 2025, more than 1.36 billion people around the world will celebrate Chinese New Year. For 2025, it will be Year of the Wood Snake, one of the twelve animals in the Chinese zodiac. Beyond the beautiful celebrations in the streets and the lanterns and dragons dancers are some rather amazing traditions that have survived hundreds and hundreds of years.

The first thing to note about Chinese New Year is that no one in China calls it this. In China, and by Chinese people all over the world, the event on January 29, 2025 this year is called Spring Festival or Lunar New Year and like Easter in our own calendar, it is determined by the Lunar Calendar.

They don’t just celebrate for a day. Lunar New Year Celebrations last for 15 days. This year it starts on January 29th and finishes on Valentine’s Day.

Life is simple during Lunar New Year. Prior to, and during this 15 day perioud there are specific things you have to do to ensure you have a lucky year, and over a billion people observe these things. Luck is very important.

Before Lunar New Year arrives, homes are thoroughly cleaned to sweep away ill fortune and welcome good luck. Cleaning makes way for good luck to enter. Then, people put away their brooms, cloths and dustpans so luck won’t be swept away after cleaning.

On New Years Eve there are sumptuous feasts served to family gatherings everywhere and fireworks at midnight. Dumplings, seen to represent nuggets of gold are a prominent part of the feast.

On day one there are no showers, laundry or cleaning and definitely no taking out the rubbish. Doing any of these things is said to wash away your luck and prosperity for the new year. Many continue to not clean at all during the 15 day period. It is a tradition that has been honoured for generations.

On the second day, considered the beginning of the new year, you hang out with family, most particularly your in-laws apparently.

On the third day, visiting friends and family is frowned upon because it is a day prone to arguments. So people stay home. They call it the day named “Chikou, directly transpated as “red mouth”.

And on day seven, everyone in Lunar tradition celebrates their birthday.

Celebrations continue right through to day 15, when the event ends with the Lantern Festival. Candles are lit to guide wayward spirits home, and families walk the streets carrying lighted lanterns.

There are several variations on the mythology behind Chinese New Year celebrations. Most are based on an ugly bloodthirsty monster named Nian that would emerge on the last night of each year to destroy villages and eat people. A wise elder advised villagers to scare the monster away with loud noises. That night, they set fire to bamboo, lit fireworks, and banged their drums. The monster, afraid of the loud noises and lights, ran away to hide in its cave.

In another version of the myth, an old man persuaded Nian to turn its wrath on other monsters, not the villagers. Before he was seen riding away on Nian, the old man, actually a god, advised the people to hang red paper decorations in their homes and set off firecrackers on the last night of the year to keep Nian away. On the first day of the new year, the villagers celebrated, greeting each other with the words Guo Nian which mean “survive the Nian”, a tradition that has continued to this day to mean “celebrate the new year.”