Facts about the Lunar New Year Festival

colorful celebration that’s steeped in folklore and history, Lunar New Year is one of the most widely celebrated festivals in the world. Featuring vibrant red decorations, mesmerizing lion dances, and more, the festival is a celebration of wealth, longevity, and good fortune. From lucky red envelopes to sumptuous feasts, these six facts below will help illuminate the deep-rooted customs, symbolism, and superstitions that have surrounded the occasion for centuries.

It’s also called the Spring Festival

Because it occurs in late January or February, near the end of winter, the Lunar New Year as celebrated in China is frequently called the Spring Festival. The event marks the start of spring in the Chinese lunar calendar and is a time for people to bid farewell to the cold and welcome the new growth and beginnings that the season traditionally brings. It’s common for people to clean their housesbefore the first day of the celebration (similar to spring cleaning rituals in the West), to do away with the old and make way for the new.

It’s not just Chinese

Many Asian countries celebrate the Lunar New Year in different ways, from Tết Nguyên Đán in Vietnam to Seollal in Korea. But Chinese New Year itself is also celebrated in places that are home to significant Chinese populations, including Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Many non-Asian countries host major Lunar New Year festivals as well, including Australia, Canada, Mauritius, New Zealand, Peru, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Outside of Asia, San Francisco, Sydney, and London have some of the biggest Lunar New Year celebrations.

Evil beasts kept at bay

In ancient Chinese mythology, Nian, a monster who lives under the sea or inside of the mountains, was said to eat people in the night, and it especially had a taste for children. According to legend, an old man decided to light red firecrackers to scare the beast away from villages. The old man turned out to be a deity, Yanhuang, who was there to rescue the villagers from the Nian. Because the Nian didn’t return, it was believed that the color red and the explosion of the firecrackers scared the monster away. Red firecrackers, lanterns, and drums are still part of the celebration today, and considered an auspicious measure taken to ensure a lucky, safe new year. (Nian, incidentally, also means “year” in Chinese.)

Lots of noodles and dumplings

The celebration of the Lunar New Year focuses on togetherness, as friends and family trade hopes and wishes for the future. Some of the foods that are traditionally eaten during the festivals have symbolic meanings, such as noodles to bring longevity, sticky rice balls in syrup to represent familial closeness, and a whole steamed fish as a symbol of prosperity and abundance. Dumplings — which are said to look like little money pouches — are a favorite treat of the festival and thought to bring wealth to the eater.

It’s all about the moon

The Lunar New Year honors the start of the year according to the lunar calendar, which is based around the moon’s phases. (In contrast, many Western countries use the solar-year-based Gregorian calendar and celebrate the solar new year.) Because each lunation (lunar cycle) takes 29.5 days, the months in a lunar calendar will alternate between 29 and 30 days. As such, a lunar year is 354 days, 8 hours, 48 minutes, and 34 seconds long — which is between 11 and 12 days shorter than the 365-day solar year. The Lunar New Year always begins on the day that the new moon appears, which is between January 21 and February 20 every year.

Red envelopes with money for the kids

Chinese culture includes a belief that coins will protect their owner from evil spirits, as will the color red. As a result, parents give their children (and often other adults) red envelopes containing money, to ensure prosperity in the new year. Coins are usually given to small kids, while older children can be given both coins and bills — although the bills must be crisp and new, to symbolize a fresh start to the new year. Because six and eight are lucky numbers in China, children often receive money in denominations of six or eight.