The story behind the day
Lunar New Year opens the first month of the Chinese calendar, on its first day. In China it is called the Spring Festival; Koreans keep it as Seollal and Vietnamese as Tết. It closes one year and opens the next: households clean, families gather for a late dinner on the eve, ancestors are honoured, and children receive red envelopes. The season runs until the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day. Chinese folk religion and Confucian ideas of filial duty both shape the rites for ancestors.[1–11]
Origins
Chinese folk tradition explains the noise and colour of the season with the story of Nian, a fierce creature said to have preyed on villages on the final night of the lunar year. Firecrackers are lit to drive demons off, and the Smithsonian notes that fireworks were used to scare off evil spirits during the festival. Alongside the legend sits the older business of ritual: at the turning of the year, offerings go to the gods and to the ancestors. The legend is a popular explanation, and the ancestral offerings are the practice it grew around.[13–15]
What it marks
The festival marks the end of the old year and the start of the new. Confucian thought frames the honouring of ancestors as a way of fulfilling filial responsibilities, while folk belief holds that ancestors are the dead whom descendants feed, and that the dead who go unvenerated may become wandering ghosts. Both views give the family table and the family grave a weight beyond sentiment, and many people travel long distances to be home for the turn of the year.[9–11, 16]
How it came to be
The lunar year opens with the first new moon of its first month. After the founding of the Republic of China in 1912 its government adopted the Gregorian calendar for public use. Sources differ on when the lunar New Year came to be called the Spring Festival: a Columbia University guide ties the name to that reform, while a Wake Forest museum page dates the renaming to after 1949. In Korea, the Joseon dynasty built its social order on Confucian ritual. Ancestral rites were counted among four cardinal family rites, and Zhu Xi's Family Rituals was the manual from which Koreans took the rules of ancestor worship.[1, 17–18]
How it is kept
Beforehand people tidy their houses, lay in supplies and cook. On the eve of the new year families share a dinner and keep vigil late into the night; paired guardian prints are pasted at the main entrance, and elders give children red envelopes of money. Lion dances are a favourite of the season, and troupes may visit houses and shops to bring good luck. The celebration runs for about two weeks and ends on the fifteenth day with the Lantern Festival.[3–6, 19–20]
Across traditions
In Korea the day is Seollal. Families hold charye, a memorial service for ancestors, and tteokguk, sliced rice-cake soup, is a seasonal dish. Younger people then perform sebae, a deep bow to their elders. Vietnamese keep the new year as Tết. The festival is also widely celebrated wherever there is a large overseas Chinese population, and in the United States it is often known as Chinese New Year.[2, 7–8, 12, 21–22]
Sources
Each statement above was checked against published sources; the verdict says whether it stood as written, was corrected or was hedged.
- VerifiedUNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, Spring Festival, social practices of the Chinese people in celebration of traditional New Year; Asian Art Museum.
- VerifiedLibrary of Congress, Celebrating Lunar New Year with the Library of Congress's Collections; Columbia University, Asia for Educators, The Lunar New Year: Rituals and Legends.
- VerifiedUNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, Spring Festival; Library of Congress, Celebrating Lunar New Year.
- VerifiedUNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, Spring Festival; Asian Art Museum.
- VerifiedColumbia University, Asia for Educators; Library of Congress, Celebrating Lunar New Year.
- VerifiedSmithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Lunar New Year Celebration; Columbia University, Asia for Educators.
- CorrectedNational Folk Museum of Korea, What is Charye?; Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Lunar New Year: Celebrating Seollal.
- CorrectedLibrary of Congress, Celebrating Lunar New Year; Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Lunar New Year Celebration.
- CorrectedColumbia University, Asia for Educators; Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Lunar New Year Celebration; Lam Museum of Anthropology, Wake Forest University.
- VerifiedPew Research Center, Confucianism, Taoism and Chinese folk religions; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Confucius.
- VerifiedEncyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed.; Pew Research Center.
- CorrectedSmithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Lunar New Year Celebration; Columbia University, Asia for Educators.
- VerifiedUNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, Spring Festival; Encyclopedia of Religion.
- VerifiedLibrary of Congress, Celebrating Lunar New Year; Lam Museum of Anthropology, Wake Forest University, History of Chinese New Year.
- CorrectedEncyclopedia of Religion; Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Spring Festival, Lunar New Year.
- CorrectedColumbia University, Asia for Educators; Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Spring Festival, Lunar New Year.
- CorrectedColumbia University, Asia for Educators, The Lunar New Year: Rituals and Legends; Lam Museum of Anthropology, Wake Forest University, History of Chinese New Year.
- CorrectedStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Korean Confucianism; Martina Deuchler, The Impact of Confucianism on the Korean Kinship System: A Reconsideration, Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture 36.
- VerifiedColumbia University, Asia for Educators, The Lunar New Year: Rituals and Legends; Asian Art Museum.
- VerifiedLibrary of Congress, Celebrating Lunar New Year; Columbia University, Asia for Educators.
- CorrectedNational Folk Museum of Korea, What is Charye?; Library of Congress, Celebrating Lunar New Year.
- CorrectedLibrary of Congress, Celebrating Lunar New Year; National Folk Museum of Korea, Permanent Exhibition 2.