How to Celebrate Chinese New Year 

Celebrating the Chinese New Year, which falls every year between late January and late February depending on the Chinese Lunar Calendar, differs a bit from the New Year in the U.S. Just like the American version, Chinese New Year parties include fireworks, food and fun, plus staying up past midnight. To understand how to celebrate Chinese New Year, get familiar with rituals, symbols and other customs that are meaningful to the holiday.

Pre-Chinese New Year preparations lead to New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day activities. Then, festivities carry on for a couple weeks after. The traditional way to begin preparing for the Chinese New Year is by thoroughly organizing your home and giving it a deep cleaning to sweep out the old and bring in the new. 

Use the Color Red

In Chinese culture, the color red is auspicious. Use it everywhere to amplify your luck. It denotes good luck, fortune, happiness and abundance. You can wear it and also use it in your decor, from front door wreaths to bedding. Drape your home in shades of red during the Chinese New Year and beyond. 

Dish Up a Main Meal

In Chinese culture, this is considered the most important meal of the year. Set the table in elegance with cloth napkins and tablecloths to represent quality and wealth. In Chinese tradition, foods have symbolic significance. Half the fun in choosing a Chinese New Year dinner menu is in deciding what symbols you intend to serve. The emphasis during the New Year’s dinner is on bringing luck to everyone in the coming year. If possible, serve New Year’s dinner on red dinnerware or add red to your dinner set to infuse even more luck.

Choose foods that represent prosperity, too. Pot stickers look like ingots. Spring rolls look like gold bars. Citrus fruits are honored in Chinese homes, especially during the new year. In Mandarin, the words of certain fruits sound like the words for gold and luck. For example, the Mandarin words for tangerine and luck sound alike. Certain foods signify wholeness, family and coming together. Serve a big platter with a whole fish, chicken, duck or other fowl. 

Serve Desserts

Just as important as the main meal is the significance of the dessert table. Sweets promise a sweet new beginning. Fill your dessert table with sticky rice cakes baked with peanuts and sesame seeds. Egg custard tarts are round, which signifies family togetherness, reunion and also abundance because of its rich texture and taste. Continue the festivities with bowls of candied nuts and seeds, which symbolize fertility.

Enjoy the Fireworks

In the Chinese culture, bright lights and loud noises are thought to scare away anything negative. That’s why fireworks are an important part of the New Year’s celebration. You’ll find many fireworks displays in cities or other parts of the world during Chinese New Year. In your home, make it bright with plenty of lights to spark the festivities. Use mini-poppers as firecrackers to carry the symbolic gesture into your own home.

Give Lucky Gifts

Red is the primary color of luck. So are yellow and gold, which symbolize wealth and prosperity. Chinese tradition even takes into consideration the color of the wrapping paper or bag. Stick to red, yellow or gold.  Keep in mind that in China, the number 8 is the luckiest number. Think in terms of sets of eight – eight pieces of candy, eight bracelet charms or a tea set with eight cups – to bring good luck to the recipient. Traditional Chinese New Year’s presents also include red envelopes filled with money. They’re given to children, unmarried adults and those in need. The red envelopes wrap the money in good luck and fortune that’s transferred to the recipient.

Celebrate the End of Chinese New Year

The last day of the Chinese New Year is marked by lighting lanterns. On the evening of the last day of the New Year’s celebration, it’s symbolic to eat rice dumplings for their roundness and fullness, while watching lit paper lanterns rise into the sky towards the full moon. You can replicate the same symbolic gesture by surrounding yourself with an array of lit lanterns while sitting under the moon at home.