新年快乐 HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR

Celebration of the Chinese New Year dates back thousands of years. It is China's most important celebration. 
Chinese New Year usually falls on the second new moon after the window solstice and 2016 will be the Year of the Red Fire Monkey - starting February 4th with New Years Day on February 8th. 
Also known as Lunar New Year or Spring Festival, there are many rituals, traditions and celebrations before and after New Years Day. It is a time for Chinese families to reunite to start a new year together. 

The home is a key component to the festivities. 
Spring Festival Couplets, or Chun Lian, are composed of a pair of poetry lines written in gold or black on red paper. They are pasted vertically on both sides of the front door along with a four-character horizontal scroll which is affixed above the door frame. Couplets express peoples delight in the festival and their wishes for a better life in the coming year. Couplets are carefully pasted in place before New Years Eve. 

 

An example might read:

上联：丹凤呈祥龙献瑞 

下联：红桃贺岁杏迎春 

横批：福满人间 


Upper Scroll: Dragon and Phoenix Bring the Prosperity

Lower Scroll: Peach and Apricot Blossoms Welcome the Spring
Horizontal Scroll: Blessing on the Land 

For more couplet information: http://www.travelchinaguide.com/essential/holidays/new-year/spring-festival-couplets.htm

On the days immediately before the New Year celebration, Chinese families give their homes a thorough cleaning. There is a Cantonese saying: "Wash away the dirt on nin ya baat", but the practice is not restricted to nin ya baat (the 28th day of month 12). It is believed the cleaning sweeps away the bad luck of the preceding year and makes their homes ready for good luck. 
Brooms and dust pans are put away on the first day so that the newly arrived good luck cannot be swept away. 
Some people give their homes, doors and window frames a new coat of red paint; decorators and paper-hangers do a year-end rush of business prior to Chinese New Year. 

In many households where Buddhism or Taoism is prevalent, home altars and statues are cleaned thoroughly, and decorations used to adorn altars over the past year are taken down and burned a week before the new year starts, to be replaced with new decorations. 

Taoists (and Buddhists to a lesser extent) will also "send gods". And example would be burning a paper effigy of Zao Jun the Kitchen God, the recorder of family functions. This is done so that the Kitchen God can report to the Jade Emperer of the family household's transgressions and good deeds. 

Families often offer sweet foods such as candy in order to "bribe" the deities into reporting good things about the family. 

Zao Jun, The Kitchen God

Traditionally every Chinese household 
would have a paper effigy or a plaque
of Zao Jun and his wife (who write 
down everything that is said in the 
household over the year for her 
husband's report to the Jade Emperor) 
over the fireplace in the kitchen 

Zao Jun, The Kitchen God



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Once the home has been cleaned and decorated, the biggest event of any Chinese New Year's Eve is the Reunion Dinner. This meal is comparable to Thanksgiving dinner in the U.S. and remotely similar to Christmas dinner in other countries.

One detail to point out here is the dining table. A round dining table is preferred in many Chinese households to promote intimacy and ease of sharing - making it most appropriate for the yearly Reunion Dinner. 

A CIRCULAR DINING TABLE UNITES FRIENDS AND FAMILY 

After dinner, some families go to local temples hours before the new year begins to pray for a prosperous new year by lighting the first incense of the year; however in modern practice, many households hold parties and even hold a countdown to the new year. 

Traditionally, firecrackers were lit to scare away evil spirits - with the household doors sealed - not to be reopened until the new morning in a ritual called "opening the door of fortune"...

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