Chinese New Year Rituals

Chinese New Year is a shifting holiday. Yuan Tan or Chinese New Year is decided based on the Lunar calendar. Generally, it takes place between February 08 and March 07. Chinese New Year festival is a family-oriented festival. All the family members join in the festive mood to celebrate with each other.

Chinese New Year celebrations bring good luck, health, luck, and wealth. For Chinese families, this festive season brings togetherness with family and friends. Red is the official color of Chinese New Year. Be it home decoration or the New Year dress, red is widely used in Chinese New Year celebrations. According to the popular Chinese New Year rituals, they clean their houses before New Year. Cleaning and washing houses and belongs are mandatory in the celebrations of Chinese New Year.

Chinese New Year celebrations start on the first day of the spring and it ends with the lantern festival, which takes place on the 15th day of spring. During the New Year festival in China, street parades are organized, which people gather and watch various kinds of processions. The main attraction of these street parades is dragon and lion dance. The dragon dance symbolizes durability and wealth. There are at least 50 dancers inside the dragon.

According to Chinese New Year rituals, they lit firecrackers and fireworks. They believe that loud noises sweep away all the evil spirits. To frighten them, the Chinese people decorate their houses with real as well as artificial firecrackers. The motto of this decoration is to keep away the bad spirits and the bad luck, which they bring with them. In Hong Kong, the people are not allowed to lit firecrackers. For this reason, they decorate their houses with firecrackers.

Plants and flowers are also considered lucky for them. They buy plants from the market and decorate their houses with these plants. They believe that plants and flowers will bring good luck to their families. Among all the plants, the Kumquat trees are considered as the luckiest while among the flowers, peach blossom is considered to bring good luck and fortune. Fruits are also considered lucky and Tangerine is considered the luckiest for its bright color. According to the Chinese New Year customs, odd number is unlucky and for this reason, the tangerines come in pairs.

The celebrations of Chinese New year starts with the blessings of the elders of the family. Chinese people give tribute to the Kitchen God. In Chinese families, there is a customary ritual of presenting money. The married couples present the gift to the younger members of the family and unmarried members of the family. The money is kept in the red envelop. There is also a good luck message on the coin. After this ritual, the family members gather for Chinese New Year feast. Every Chinese year is associated with an animal. They try to avoid that animal’s meat on the dinner in accordance with the Chinese New Year rituals. For example, if the new year is rat, they will not eat rat’s meat during the New Year dinner.