This coming Spring Festival starts on 19th February 2015. Next year is
also called Goat year, instead of Horse this year. Spring Festival celebrations
traditionally run from Chinese New Year's Eve, the last day of the last month
of the Chinese calendar, to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of
the first month.
The Spring Festival is the most important festival for the Chinese
people and is when all family members get together, just like Christmas. The
Spring Festival falls on the 1st day of the 1st lunar month, often one month
later than the Gregorian calendar. It has more than 4,000 years of history, and
celebrates family reunion and hopes the advent of spring and flowers blossoming
rich with full of colourful activities.
Every family does a thorough house cleaning and purchases enough food,
including fish, meat, roasted nuts and seeds, all kinds of candies and fruits,
etc, for the festival period. Windows and doors will be decorated with red
colour paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes of "good fortune"
or "happiness", "wealth", and "longevity." The
Chinese character 'Fu' is pasted on the centre of the door and paper-cut
pictures adorn windows. Other activities include lighting firecrackers and
giving money in red paper envelopes.
Often, the evening preceding Chinese New Year's Day is an occasion for Chinese families to gather for the annual reunion dinner. Food during this happy event has its characteristics, which is the representative of Chinese festival food culture. Dumplings and the reunion dinner are indispensable at this time. Cold and hot dishes are all served. Fish is always an important dish then, which expresses people’s hope of having a wealthy year.
The lively atmosphere not only fills every household, but permeates to
streets and lanes. A series of activities such as lion dancing, dragon lantern
dancing, lantern festivals and temple fairs will be held for days. The Spring
Festival then comes to an end when the Lantern Festival is finished.
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