Spring Festival is also called The Chinese New Year. The New Year is the first day of first month in the lunar calendar. It marks the beginning of Spring Festival. But it is not the official beginning of spring. Lichun is the beginning of spring (1st solar term) in the Chinese lunar calendar. Under the lunar system, Chinese ancient astronomers marked off every 15 days as one solar term calculating the terms according to the positions of the Earth and the Sun. These terms are still used today, especially by the Chinese farmers in planning planting cycles. Lichun is the first day of one of the 15 day terms and usually falls about ten days after Chinese New Year's. Just as Christmas is the most festive holiday in the Christian world, Spring Festival is the most important holiday in China. It lasts 15 days from the New Year's to Yuanxiao Festival or Lantern Festival. Celebrations last for two weeks and the State Council officially marks Spring Festival with a three-day National Holiday.
On New Year's Eve, families get together to send off the old year and usher in the new, a year which they hope will be rich in harvest, happiness and success. Everybody goes to bed later than usual. Some spend the night to watch the year go out, chatting or playing card games, watching TV and nibbling sweets and nuts and all sorts of delicacies. For the children, it is a treat to set off firecrackers and fireworks and you can hear them pop and bang throughout the night.
The first two days of the new year are spent visiting friends or relatives. Most people go back to work on the fourth day. In the countryside, however, festivities go on until the fifteenth day which is Lantern Festival.
During Lantern Festival, people decorate their homes with colorful lanterns and treat themselves with Yuanxiao, a kind of glutinous rice flour balls stuffed with sweet fillings or meat or dried cassia flower. Throughout China, lanterns of every description are put on public display.
Yuanxiao Festival (The First Full Moon of the Lunar Year)
Yuanxiao or "Lantern Festival", on the 15th Day of the 1st Lunar Month, marks the end of the Spring Festival. The Chinese people sometimes call it the Yuanxiao Festival because they like to eat small round dumplings of sticky rice containing sweet fillings. (Literally "yuan" means "round one"; xiao means "overnight".) Some people prefer to call it the "Feast of Lanterns" because from the 11th century of the Song Dynasty, it was a custom to hang out various beautiful lanterns on the 15th of the 1st Lunar months. Along the main streets in many towns and cities different kinds of Chinese lanterns were hung. People from country areas travelled to the busy towns or cities to visit at this time.
This festival scene at night has been vividly described in many operas and novels. In the Chinese classical novel Water Margin, the heroes used this festival as an opportunity to boldly and courageously conquer the so-called "World Renowned City" Damingfu in Shandong Province, where they killed the officials and rescued their friends from prison. This old custom of hanging lanterns was almost forgotten just prior to liberation because of the social poverty and unsettled life of the people. Nowadays, in Beijing, gauze lanterns are hung in shops, some of them having interesting, historical pictures painted on them. Children and young people like to play with lanterns. They can be bought in streets during the Spring Festival.
The game of "Dragon Lantern" is still played in many places in China. A group of people line up, each holding a part of the dragon's body. Everyone in the performance co-operates closely in trying to attract dragon's eyes. The dragon-dance is more difficult to perform than the lion dance, which is also part of the festival.
Source: http://china.pages.com.cn/chinese_culture/customs/customs.html#cal endar
