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Chinese New Year is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. It is sometimes called the Lunar New Year.
The festival traditionally begins on the first day of the first lunar month in the Chinese calendar and ends with a Lantern Festival on the 15th.
Although the Chinese calendar traditionally did not use continuously numbered years, its years are now often numbered from the reign of Huangdi outside China.
In the Gregorian calendar, Chinese New Year falls on different dates each year, a date between January 21 and February 20. This means that the holiday usually falls on the second (very rarely third) new moon after the winter solstice. In traditional Chinese culture, lichun is a solar term marking the start of spring, which occurs about February 4.
One scheme of continuously numbered Chinese-calendar years assigns 4706 to the year beginning January 26, 2009, but this is not universally accepted. Last year was the Year of the Rat, and 2009 will be the Year of the Ox.
According to tales and legends, the beginning of Chinese New Year started with the fight against a mythical beast called the Nian or Year in Chinese. Nian would come on the first day of New Year to devour livestock, crops, and even villagers, especially children. To protect themselves, the villagers would put food in front of their doors at the beginning of every year.
It was believed that after the Nian ate the food they prepared, it wouldn't attack any more people. One time, people saw that the Nian was scared away by a little child wearing red. The villagers then understood that the Nian was afraid of the colour red. Hence, when the New Year was about to come, villagers would hang red lanterns and red spring scrolls on windows and doors.
People also used firecrackers to frighten away the Nian. From then on, the Nian never came to the village again. The Nian was eventually captured by Hongjunlaozu, an ancient Taoist monk.
