The Lunar New Year: the Spring Festival in China, Korea and Vietnam
How the Lunar New Year is calculated, why it falls between January and February, Spring Festival customs, the twelve animals and the Lantern Festival.
The Lunar New Year falls each year between 21 January and 20 February of the Gregorian calendar. In China it is called Chunjie, the Spring Festival, and it is the most important celebration of the year; in Korea it is Seollal, in Vietnam Tết Nguyên Đán. Its moving date is explained by the astronomical rule that governs it: the first day of the year is the day of the new Moon that opens the first month, normally the second new Moon after the winter solstice.
How the date is calculated
In the Chinese calendar the winter solstice must always fall in the eleventh month. Counting two lunar months from that point brings us to the first month of the new year, which begins with the conjunction of Moon and Sun calculated on China's standard time. Only when a leap month falls in that stretch does the New Year move to the third new Moon after the solstice, which happens rarely. Vietnam calculates its moons on Hanoi time, and in rare cases the date of Tết differs from the Chinese one.
The name Spring Festival is relatively recent. In the years following the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1912, the word for New Year, Yuandan, was reserved for 1 January, and the traditional festival took the name Chunjie. The reference to spring is not arbitrary, however: the New Year falls near the solar term Lichun, Beginning of Spring, around 4 February.
Customs and legends
New Year customs revolve around the family and the passage from old year to new. On the eve the family reunion dinner is eaten, and many stay awake to watch the year out, a custom called shousui. Strips of red paper bearing auspicious couplets, the chunlian, are pasted on doors, and children are given red envelopes containing money. Firecrackers and fireworks accompany midnight and the days that follow.
A folk tale, which became famous mainly in modern times, tells of a monster called Nian that came out at the end of the year to devour people and crops, and that feared the colour red, light and noise. Legend aside, the custom of loud bangs is old: a sixth-century work on the festivals of the Jingchu region describes bamboo canes thrown into the fire on the first day of the year, which by bursting were meant to drive away evil spirits.
The zodiac and the Lantern Festival
Each year is associated with one of the twelve animals of the cycle: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. The animals correspond to the twelve earthly branches and combine with the five elements in a sixty-year cycle. 2026 is the year of the Fire Horse, which began on 17 February. In Vietnam the Rabbit is replaced by the Cat and the Ox by the Water Buffalo.
The celebrations close on the fifteenth day of the first month, with the first full moon of the year: this is the Lantern Festival, Yuanxiao, when cities fill with lanterns and people eat filled balls of glutinous rice that bear the same name as the festival. Fifteen days after the new Moon of the New Year, the full moon thus marks the end of the festive period.
The Lunar New Year is today one of the most widely celebrated festivals in the world, thanks also to Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese communities on every continent. The journey of hundreds of millions of people returning home for the festival, called chunyun, is regarded as the largest periodic movement of people on the planet. Everything, once again, depends on a winter new Moon.