The Spring Festival

The Spring Festival is the most important festival for the Chinese people and is when all family members get together, just like Christmas in the West. Celebrations will last from the New Year's Eve to the 15th day of the first lunar month. People traditionally spend New Year's Eve at home with all the family members getting together. All people living away from home go back, making the busiest time for transportation systems of about half a month.

The Spring Festival falls on the 1st day of the 1st lunar month, often one month later than the Gregorian calendar. It originated from the people's sacrifice to gods and ancestors at the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one.

Strictly speaking, the Spring Festival starts every year in the early days of the 12th lunar month and will last till the mid 1st lunar month of the next year. Of them, the most important days are Spring Festival Eve and the first three days. The Chinese government now stipulates people have seven days off for the Chinese Lunar New Year.

Many customs accompany the Spring Festival and some are still followed today:

The 23rd day of the 12th lunar month is called Preliminary Eve. At this time, people offer sacrifice to the kitchen god. Now however, most families make delicious food to enjoy themselves.

After the Preliminary Eve, people begin preparing for the coming New Year. This is called "Seeing the New Year in". Store owners are busy then as everybody goes out to purchase necessities for the New Year. Materials not only include edible oil, rice, flour, chicken, duck, fish and meat, but also fruit, candies and kinds of nuts. What's more, new clothes and shoes for the children as well as gifts for the elderly, friends and relatives, are all on the list of purchasing.

Besides, for the festival, people completely clean the indoors and outdoors of their homes as well as their clothes, bedclothes and all their utensils, decorate their windows with paper cuts, place New Year's couplets on the frame of their front door, highlighting Chinese calligraphy with black characters on red paper, and pin up New Year's paintings in their living rooms. In all, an atmosphere of rejoicing and festivity features largely.