Chinese New Year or Spring Festival

Chinese New Year or Spring Festival is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. It is sometimes called the "Lunar New Year" by English speakers. The festival traditionally begins on the first day of the first month (Chinese: 正月; pinyin: zhēng yuè) in the Chinese calendar and ends on the 15th; this day is called Lantern Festival. Chinese New Year's Eve is known as chú xī. It literally means "Year-pass Eve".

Chinese New Year Hamper is the longest and most important festivity in the Lunar Calendar. The origin of Chinese New Year is itself centuries old and gains significance because of several myths and traditions. Ancient Chinese New Year is a reflection on how the people behaved and what they believed in the most.

Celebrated in areas with large populations of ethnic Chinese, Chinese New Year is considered a major holiday for the Chinese and has had influence on the new year celebrations of its geographic neighbors, as well as cultures with whom the Chinese have had extensive interaction. These include Koreans (Seollal), Tibetans and Bhutanese (Losar), Mongolians (Tsagaan Sar), Vietnamese (Tết), and formerly the Japanese before 1873 (Oshogatsu). Outside of Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, Chinese New Year is also celebrated in countries with significant Han Chinese populations, such as Singapore, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. In countries such as Australia, Canada and the United States, although Chinese New Year is not an official holiday, many ethnic Chinese hold large celebrations and Australia Post, Canada Post, and the US Postal Service issues New Year's themed stamps.

Within China, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the Chinese New Year Hamper vary widely. People will pour out their money to buy presents, decoration, material, food, and clothing. It is also the tradition that every family thoroughly cleans the house to sweep away any ill-fortune in hopes to make way for good incoming luck. Windows and doors will be decorated with red colour paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes of “happiness”, “wealth”, and “longevity”. On the Eve of Chinese New Year, supper is a feast with families. Food will include such items as pigs, ducks, chicken and sweet delicacies. The family will end the night with firecrackers. Early the next morning, children will greet their parents by wishing them a healthy and happy new year, and receive money in red paper envelopes. The Chinese New Year tradition is a great way to reconcile forgetting all grudges, and sincerely wish peace and happiness for everyone.

Although the Chinese calendar traditionally does not use continuously numbered years, outside China its years are often numbered from the reign of Huangdi. But at least three different years numbered 1 are now used by various scholars, making the year 2009 "Chinese Year" 4707, 4706, or 4646.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year

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Chinese New Year: Tips To Bring The Most Into Your New Year

By: carole provzolne

On february 18th, we will be ringing in another new year. Wait a minute, didn't we just do that? I am speaking of the chinese new year and the energy and life that surrounds that special day. Do you have to be chinese to ensure a wonderful new year with wonderful new beginnings? Absolutely not! Try these simple, inexpensive things to welcome in the terrific new start you have been looking for.
* here i go again, the clutter word in chinese new year hamper. Unused clothing, old food, anything no longer needed or used should be discarded. The is not a whole spring cleaning, rather your intent (and some room) to allow the new energy into your space. Give goodwill a call, you'll both be grateful.
* clean up, dust the cobwebs away, energize your surroundings. Many consultants use sage or you can simply use sound as a method of space clearing. Set your intentions to rid the home of anything negative that has occurred and simply tap on something that reverberates. A good cut crystal glass and a spoon work well. Make sure to get the corners where the energy lingers.
* if you can, pay down some bills. The ones you have been putting off that are lying around, the overdue ones. Start the new year off with as clean a slate as possible and as little debt owed as you can. Remember, even if you can't afford to pay much, it's your intention to allow the debt out of your life this year to attract all the wealth you will need or want.
* do something special for yourself. Treat yourself at this special time to a massage, that dress you have been wanting, a nice dinner or just a long bubble bath with no distractions. Something just for you so that other good things follow the new energy you are putting into yourself.
* make a change. It could be significant or something small but do something different. New years and new beginnings mean a new way of doing things, changing the old that doesn't work for us anymore or things in our life that are stagnant. You might get a new hairstyle, a new look, take a different route to work, meditate, anything you feel comfortable with that signifies that you are willing to "go with the flow" and allow the new energy and the new changes in.
*sweep the kitchen floor anytime prior to midnight on the chinese new year's eve. It symbolizes letting go of the old and putting it right outside (example : chinese new year hamper)

Http://www.chinatownconnection.com

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