Chinese New Year

Sources

• Congressional Research Service, Lunar New Year: Fact Sheet, CRS Report R46674, updated January 16, 2026 — https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R46674.html → the Lunar New Year starting on the second new moon after the winter solstice and falling between January 21 and February 19; the sexagenary cycle beginning in 1984 and ending in 2043, the ten heavenly stems and five elements, the twelve earthly branches and the twelve zodiac animals by name; the Vietnamese substitution of buffalo, cat and goat; the fifteen-day Chinese festival, the three-day Seollal and the three-day Tết; the list of shared customs; the Lunar New Year not being a federal holiday; California, Colorado and New Jersey legislation, Washington's legislative recognition and New York's public-school holiday, with AB 2596 (September 29, 2022), HB23-1271 (June 2, 2023), AJR201 (January 12, 2024), HB 2209 (March 13, 2024) and S7573 (September 9, 2023); San Francisco and other cities closing schools; USPS stamps from 1992; H.R. 794 and H.Res. 75 introduced January 28, 2025; the San Francisco parade described as the largest celebration of its kind in the world; population estimates of 5.4 million people of Chinese descent, about 320,000 of Taiwanese descent, about 2 million Korean Americans and about 2.3 million Vietnamese Americans, from the American Community Survey 2022 one-year estimates.
• Hong Kong Observatory, Gregorian-Lunar Calendar Conversion Table of 2027 — https://www.hko.gov.hk/en/gts/time/calendar/pdf/files/2027e.pdf → 2027 as the Ding-wei year of the Goat; the first lunar month of 2027 beginning in February.
• Hong Kong Observatory, The Chinese Calendar — https://www.hko.gov.hk/en/gts/time/calendarinfo.htm → "Months in the Agricultural Calendar start with a new moon, which occurs when the moon and the Sun move to the same longitude on the ecliptic"; twelve synodic months totalling 354.3672 days, more than ten days short of a tropical year; the accumulation that produces a leap month and the Metonic cycle of seven leap months in nineteen years.
• Hong Kong Observatory, Conversion between the Gregorian and Chinese calendars — https://www.hko.gov.hk/en/gts/time/conversion.htm → the stated uncertainty of a few minutes in calculating moon phases and solar terms decades ahead, and the resulting one-day discrepancy when a new moon falls close to midnight.
• Library of Congress, Celebrating Lunar New Year with the Library of Congress's Collections — https://blogs.loc.gov/families/2024/02/celebrating-lunar-new-year-with-the-library-of-congresss-collections/ → the Nian Monster legend and that customs are "believed to be based on" it, with red clothing and firecrackers; cleaning the house and washing one's hair before the new year; avoiding knives and scissors; red envelopes of lucky money and lion troupes visiting houses and shops; dumplings resembling parcels of money and the shared whole fish as a symbol of family unity; the holiday being "often known as 'Chinese New Year'" in the United States; Seollal, sebae and tteokguk; Tết, the Kitchen God and bánh chưng; the Library's photographs of Chinatown parades in Washington, New York and San Francisco, Hmong New Year in Chico and Lao and Cambodian New Year in Lowell.
• Smithsonian Magazine, How to Participate in the Lunar New Year This Year — https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/lunar-new-year-explained-and-how-participate-180976971/ → the agrarian reading of the festival's timing between harvest and planting; red envelopes originating in swapped coins to ward off evil spirits; the symbolic sweeping of the home; tangyuan at the Lantern Festival; the reunion dinner on New Year's Eve and the Lantern Festival closing the season; the fifteen-day festival and the one-week public holiday in the People's Republic of China.
• Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Spring Festival, Lunar New Year — https://asia-archive.si.edu/learn/for-educators/teaching-china-with-the-smithsonian/videos/spring-festival-lunar-new-year/ → the festival beginning with the first new moon of a lunar calendar and lasting fifteen days; the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month marking the end; chunyun, spring travel, as one of the world's largest annual migrations.
• Ministry of Manpower, Government of Singapore, Public Holidays — https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/public-holidays → the official Chinese New Year dates of 6 and 7 February 2027, Saturday and Sunday, and of 17 and 18 February 2026.

Source conflict reported rather than resolved by averaging: how the new year's start is defined. Smithsonian Magazine says the holiday marks "the first full moon of the lunar calendar"; the National Museum of Asian Art says it "begins with the first new moon of a lunar calendar"; the Congressional Research Service says it "starts on the second new moon after the winter solstice." The new-moon accounts are preferred above because they agree with the Hong Kong Observatory's own description of how the calendar is built and with the Lantern Festival falling on the fifteenth day; the full-moon wording is not adopted. The two sources also differ on the Gregorian range, the CRS giving January 21 to February 19 and Smithsonian Magazine January 21 to February 20; the CRS figure is used.

Omitted for want of an acceptable source: the age of the festival, any dynasty or era of origin, and any claim about how far back it runs — none of the sources consulted states one, so none is asserted. Also omitted: spring couplets and niangao, for which no acceptable source was reached, and the Gregorian date of the 2027 festival in prose, which the dates table below carries from the site's rule engine.

Not used as sources: nationaltoday, nationaldaycalendar, checkiday, timeanddate, and comparable aggregator and content-farm pages.