The A to Z of the Spring Festival

Children display scrolls wishing a Happy New Year.

Catherine Hong

The Spring Festival has many customs and foreigners new to China can learn a great deal about Chinese people through the Lunar New Year holiday

The Spring Festival is the beginning of the Chinese Lunar New Year. The Chinese character in ancient seal style for year has 禾 on the top and 千 at the bottom. 禾 means grain, while 千 means many. Therefore, all activities in the Spring Festival are a celebration of the harvest and to pray for a good harvest in the upcoming year. Even today, the Spring Festival still carries this meaning.

The most important event of the Spring Festival is New Year’s Eve dinner. According to tradition, all family members are supposed to present and indulge in a big feast. Many Chinese will travel across the country to ensure they are home for the New Year’s Eve dinner.

Families are considered the cornerstone of society and unity is the basic requirement for the creation of wealth and well-being.

Other customs include putting up Spring Festival scrolls and setting off firecrackers. The scrolls are made with red paper and feature propitious sentences for the New Year. These are the special forms of couplets when people put them on the door during the New Year for happiness. Putting on the Spring Festival scrolls has a history of over 1,000 years while setting off firecrackers has been a Spring Festival tradition for over 2,000 years. According to an ancient legend, people lit firecrackers to scare evil monsters.

Elders prepare hong bao for younger members in the family. Hong bao, literally “red envelopes,” is New Year lucky money given in red envelopes.