What do you know about Chinese New Year?

1. The calendars that most of us are familiar with—twelve named months, consisting of sequentially increasing numbered dates—bear little resemblance to Chinese calendars. The Chinese calendar is lunar dependant, meaning its composition has a lot to do with the cycles of the moon. Subsequently, the Chinese New Year doesn’t fall on the same date from year to year. In 2010, in fact, the Chinese New Year falls on February 14th, a day that most of us know as Valentine’s Day. So this year while you’re picking out your favorite Valentine ecards to send, you can pick out your Chinese New Year cards at the same time.
2. The story of the Chinese New Year celebration is just as interesting as how it’s decided when it will fall. According to Chinese popular culture, long ago villagers had regular battles with monstrous creatures known as the Nien. To prevent the Nien from eating them and their family members, people began leaving big pots of food outside their houses on the first day of the new year. The thinking was that the monster would eat all of this food, and leave the villagers alone.
3. But once, as a Nien was making its way through a village, a few people noticed that the Nien seemed to be scared by a little girl wearing a red coat. The villagers then discovered that the Nien was terrified of the color red. Thus, a great New Year’s celebration was had—because not only could the Chinese people use this information to keep themselves safe, but they also didn’t have to give all their food to the Nien, either.
4. Today, one of the popular traditions associated with Chinese New Year is the wearing of the color red. Much like the color green on Saint Patrick’s Day, the Chinese people make sure to wear as much red as possible during the New Year’s celebration. And if enough people get in on the act, we can add giving free printable Chinese New Year cards to the list of traditions, to.
5. An annual tradition known as Chunyun also coincides with the Chinese New Year. For a 40-day period surrounding the Chinese New Year, residents of China, and people of Chinese descent from all over the world, leave their jobs and regular lives en masse, and make incredibly long journeys over thousands of miles to see extended family members. Chunyun is the largest-scale regularly-occurring human migration.
6. And Chinese New Year is different from the Western celebration of New Year’s in one other big way. Whereas the New Year’s celebration that many of us are used to lasts the better part of an evening, and leads up to a great crescendo at the strike of midnight, the Chinese New Year is a 15-day celebration. Not only that, but each and every day has specific traditions associated with it.

in the new year there is now a regular on the popular modern society do

Traditionally red packets are also handed out to younger generation by their parents, grand parents, relatives, and even close neighbors and friends during Chinese New Year. Nowadays giving red packets as a bonus at the year-end by employers becomes popular and Chinese new year parcel is also a tradition of giving to business associates or relatives.

Giving Chinese new year parcel to employees prior to the New Year is also a good idea. This can be either a gift or a bonus. If it is as a gift, the money should be just right for a gift. If as a bonus, you may enclose a check in the parcel gift and hand it out in an office.

Article Source : http://www.articlesbase.com/history-articles/what-do-you-know-about-chinese-new-year-1716705.html