Key Points
- The Lunar New Year is a significant cultural holiday celebrated in China and other East Asian countries.
- Sydney Lunar New Year Celebrations is known to be the largest outside Asia.
- The Lunar New Year's Day varies annually, occurring at times in January and at other times in February.
There are four elements to the New Year festivities. They begin a week out with Little Year, a day of memorial and prayer, followed by New Year's Eve, a day of reuniting and gift-giving.
Dr Pan Wang, a senior lecturer in Chinese and Asian Studies at the University of New South Wales, explains the Spring Festival lasts for fifteen days until the Lantern Festival.
"The Lunar New Year is the beginning of a lunar calendar year. Based on the cycles of the moon, it can be also called the Chinese New Year or Spring Festival," she says.
"It's celebrated in China and other East Asian countries like Korea, Vietnam, and Japan," Dr Wang explains.
It's also celebrated in Malaysia and Mongolia, as well as among many diasporas across the world.
Lunar New Year has a history of up to 4,000 years, starting from the Xia or Shang dynasty, Dr Wang adds.
Chinese dancers perform during the Sydney Lunar Festival Media Launch at the Chinese Garden of Friendship in Sydney on February 9, 2021. Source: AAP / AAP Image/Bianca De Marchi
"An opportunity to learn about South-eastern and Eastern Asian cultures"
Dr Kai Zhang works with the Modern Chinese Language Program at the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University in Canberra.
She says Lunar New Year celebrations in Australia are an excellent opportunity for people worldwide to learn about Chinese, Southeast Asian, and Eastern Asian cultures.
"It is a cultural event of long history and of very rich, symbolic meaning embedded in it," she says.
Ways to celebrate Lunar New Year
- Putting up decorations.
- Eating dinner with family on New Year's Eve.
- Distributing red envelopes and other gifts.
- Setting off firecrackers and fireworks.
- Watching lion and dragon dances.
"Lunar New Year is celebrated through food, eating fish, dumplings, gathering with families, and also with friends," Dr Wang explains.
"The colour red is considered a very lucky colour. So while you see a lot of red-coloured decorations, it's also a tradition for Chinese to give a red envelope to children as a way to celebrate the new year and celebrate their growth."
Iris Tang grew up in China and moved to Australia over 20 years ago.
She says the main difference between celebrations in Australia and mainland China is that in her homeland, there is a long public holiday to coincide with Lunar New Year celebrations — it's a time when hundreds of millions travel to their hometowns in China for family reunions.
According to Tang, food is integral to Lunar New Year celebrations in Australia, as in China.
"I celebrate it with my family and friends here in Canberra by preparing loads and loads of food. The way we do it is we sit around the table and make hundreds of dumplings from New Year's Eve. I make more than one meal's worth, and I may freeze them for later to eat during the rest of the New Year celebrations," Ms Tang says.
The Chinese Traditional Calendar
Although modern-day China uses the Gregorian calendar, the traditional Chinese calendar is also widely used in China and among overseas Chinese as it specifies traditional holidays, such as the lunar Chinese New Year, the Lantern Festival, and the Qingming Festival.
It also gives the traditional Chinese nomenclature of dates within a year that people use for selecting auspicious days for weddings, funerals, moving, or starting a business, Dr Pan Wang explains.
The Chinese traditional calendar is lunar-solar. It's formed on the movement of the moon and the sun, so it considers both the moon's orbit around the Earth and the Earth's orbit around the sun.
"In this calendar, the start of the month is determined by the phase of the moon. So as in most lunar calendars, months are either 29 or 30 days long, and the start of the year is determined by the solar year," Dr Wang says.
Variations of the traditional Chinese calendar are used all over East Asia.
Lunar New Year's Day can fall in January or February each year.
The Lantern Festival
The Lunar New Year celebrations traditionally last about two weeks, from Lunar New Year's Eve to the Lantern Festival, held on the fifteenth day of the lunar year, explains Dr Kai Zhang.
According to the Chinese calendar, the Lantern Festival coincides with the fifteenth day of the first month.
"It's called the Lantern Festival because there is this tradition [where] families make little lanterns for their children, and they would literally light up the lanterns outside their door," she says.
"And as far as we can go back in history, as early as the Tang dynasty, there will be large scale events held on that day."
Source: AAP / AAP Image/Jeremy Ng
"A time to pay respect to the ancestors."
Dr Craig Smith is a senior lecturer in Translation Studies (Chinese) at the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne.
He has lived in Taiwan and South Korea for a few years and has great memories of Lunar New Year celebrations.
Dr Smith says Lunar New Year's Day in South Korea is a time to respect one's ancestors, a tradition other cultures share.
"On New Year's Day, everybody sets out a meal for their deceased ancestors, pays their respects to them and offers them drinks," Dr Smith says.
"History that goes back thousands of years."
Dr Smith says many elements in the traditional celebrations of the Lunar New Year come from countries other than China.
For example, this is the case with lion dancing, traditionally displayed during Lunar New Year parades.
"When academics look at this lion dance tradition, they actually look back to thousands of years ago, and we've long known that a lot of traditions, religions, music, arts came into China from what we would now call The West or Central Asian countries, especially along the famous silk road," Dr Smith explains.
This tradition likely has some of its roots outside of China. Many people have connected it to Persian traditions based on linguistic and historical analysis.
The Chinese zodiac year begins and ends with Lunar New Year.
Each year in the repeating zodiac cycle of 12 years is represented by a zodiac animal, each with its reputed attributes. They are the Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig.
