2025 Chinese New Year's Eve is on Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Chinese New Year's Eve - 2025 Year of the Snake

2025 is the year of the Green Wood Snake. 2025 Chinese New Year Day is on Wednesday, January 29, 2025. The Chinese New Year's eve is on Tuesday, January 28, 2025. The Chinese New Year Day is the first lunar day of the first lunar month, which is Tiger month. Chinese New Year's Eve is the last lunar day of the last (mostly 12th) Chinese lunar month, which is Cow month. 2024 is the year of the Dragon. The last lunar month of Dragon year begins on December 31, 2024. It has 29 lunar days. Therefore, the 2025 Chinese New Year's Eve on the 29th lunar day of the Cow month in the Dragon year. Both Chinese New Year Day and Chinese New Year's Eve are Chinese national holidays.

Chinese New Year's Eve is the night of the Chinese family reunion. Chinese housewives need to prepare for the New Year's Eve dinner and 15-day Chinese New Year festivals for weeks. They need to clean the entire house, put a new interior and exterior decoration, prepare new clothes and gifts for all family members, and food for many events. You can imagine that the Chinese New Year festival combines Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year together.

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Chinese New Year's Eve - Animal Monster Nian

In China, Chinese New Year's Eve is called Chu-Xi or Guo-Nian . Chu means removal. Xi means night. Guo means passing. Nian means year.

The original meaning of Nian is related to farmer's harvest. Chinese Farmers celebrated their achievement for the past year, appreciated the gracious reward given from the god, and prayed for the same luck for the coming year.

Nobody knows when the legendary story about Nian began. Nian was a ferocious and carnivorous beast. It had a lion-type head with the elephant-type body. Nian couldn't find the food in the cold wintertime, because many animals hibernate in the mountains. It must go down from the mountain to find the livestock. Later, It became a man-eater.

Nian was too strong to kill. Every winter night, people must stay inside the house. Years later, people found Nian was afraid of red, fire and noisy sound. So they cut red-color peach wood hanging on the door, made a campfire in the front of the door. When Nian approached the village, then people put the bamboo into the fire to make cracking sound. They also beat the metal kitchen and farming utensils to make noisy sounds to scare Nian away.

People survived, celebrated and said congratulation to each other on the next day. People felt like a restarting point after passing the disaster. Then, they called Guo-Nian (passing Nian) the day before the new starting day.

Chinese New Year's Eve - Busy before Dinner

Many events related to the Chinese New Year are in the last lunar month. Chinese need almost a month to prepare 15-day Chinese New Year festival. House cleaning should be ready on or before the day Chinese New Year's Eve. But the Chinese family is still very busy on this day. Early morning, someone has to go to flower-market to buy flowers for worship events and New Year decoration. Red is the auspicious color in China. The pink peach flower and Japanese sakura are very popular choices for the flower arrangement.

Many families probably are still working on the final house decoration. They need to finish the decoration on doors and windows. Chinese calligraphers write the New Year's poetry on the red color paper and people pasted them on the top and both sides of the main-entry door. They said this custom comes from the story of man-eater Nian animal, which was afraid of red. In the beginning, people drew The God of Door images on the red-color peach tree wood hanging on the door to scare the devil spirit away. Later, the Chinese use red color paper instead. There is an even simpler way is to write a single character on the diamond-shape red paper and paste on the doors, windows, containers, pillars, storages, and money safety boxes. The popular characters are Spring, Luck, Full, Money, Happiness, Wealth, Safety or Prosperity. Some are posted upside down because the sound of upside-down in Chinese is similar to the word of come. So the upside-down MONEY poster means money comes. The upside-down LUCK poster means the luck comes.

Long-time ago, Chinese pasted the New Year paper-cutting arts on the windows. It's hard to find people doing this today because it's required the experienced skill and lots of patience to create those artworks. It's also quite time-consuming to put the arts on the windows.

In the afternoon around 2 or 3 P.M., Chinese need to say good-bye to the current year by telling the gods and ancestors at family Buddhist altar with Nian-Gao (sweet rice cake), Fa-Gao (steamed rice cake), animal sacrifices (pork, duck, chicken or fish), fruit, drink, candy with big red candles. Long-time ago, one thing important and special is to put a hundred coins tied with red thread to hope for good money luck and wish for longevity to 100 years old. Today, people put cash as much as you can instead.

After saying goodbye to gods and ancestors, women begin to prepare the reunion dinner. The main dish sitting in the center of the table is Hot-Pot. The traditional Hot-Pot is a big metal (alumni) bowel and has a hollow tube in the center. Chinese put the hot bone soup in the bowel and cook different kinds of sliced meat, seafood, vegetable, meatballs, and seafood balls during the dinner. They put hot-rock or hot-coal inside the hollow tube to keep food warm. So they can eat the reunion dinner each for hours.

Chinese New Year's day usually is close to spring, but it's very often that the weather is still cold. In ancient China, in order to eat the warm food, the Chinese had to sit around the cooking stove for New Year's Eve dinner. That's why this dinner is also called Wei-Lu , which means "surrounding the stove".

Chinese New Year's Eve - Reunion Dinner

There are many dishes on the dinner table. Every dish has an auspicious meaning behind it. It's connected to longevity, reunion, perfection, good luck, health, diligence, satisfaction or promotion based on the homophone of the dish's name. Family members are supposed to have some from every dish. So they can eat and chat for a longer time and share love and care during this time. However, the Chinese don't touch fish on the table. This is because the homophone of fish is the remainder, which means they have a surplus or extra saving at the end of the year. On the other hand, they need leftovers for Chinese New Year - nobody cooks at home.

After dinner, that's an exciting time for the children. They are waiting for New Year's Hong Bao , which is a Red Envelope containing the brand-new money. Adults or parents will hand out the Red Envelopes to children, unmarried immediate family, and their parents before going to the bed. Children will put all Red Envelopes under the pillow when sleeping. They said children can sleep well without a bad dream and become richer next year. The family expense increases sharply during the Chinese New Year period. Usually, the Chinese receive a year-end bonus about one or two-month salary pay. (The lucky one can even have one year salary) from the company before the Chinese New Year holiday. Therefore most families can afford better food, clothing, and decoration for Chinese New Year. Banks will prepare many brand new bills for people to exchange. That's why all the lucky money in the Red Envelope is brand-new.

The last event is the vigil to wait for New Year coming. One main reason is this can extend parents' lifespan. The sound of Sleepiness in Chinese is similar to Trouble. Sleepless means no trouble for the coming year. How can the Chinese keep them awake? It's simple. They watch TV shows for Chinese New Year special. The other way is gambling - playing Mah-Jong. It's required lots of skill, memorization, calculation, strategy, and luck to win the money. Since the full concentration, you will feel the time pass quickly. Usually, they will play Mah-Jong all night long, because the loser wouldn't quit.

Many people will gather outside the temple after reunion dinner, everyone wants to be the first person of the year to be blessed by God. There is the first incense stick race at many temples every year. One the first second of Rat hour, 11 P.M., as soon as the temple's main gate is opened, people will dash into the temple to insert the incense stick into the incense container. The winner will win a big Red-Envelope from the temple. But the most important thing is the winner will be very lucky in the coming year.

After receiving the Red Envelopes, young people like to go outside for the vigil of the year. Before midnight, they gather with friends or relatives around the park, riverside or tall buildings to wait for the Chinese New Year fireworks.

Chinese New Year's Eve Before and After

Chinese celebrates Chinese New Year for fifteen days long. Every single day means something in Chinese culture. The last day is the Lantern Festival. The Chinese need to prepare for Chinese New Year's eve and festival for weeks. The following articles explain the Chinese traditional background and events regarding the days before and after Chinese New Year's Eve.

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By Master Allen Tsai on Monday, December 16, 2024