The Chinese Spring Festival incorporating New Year takes place over 15 days with many Chinese taking up to a month’s holiday and therefore the gaining popularity of the Christian festival Christmas takes some thinking about. Chinese New Year is the longest and most important festivity in the Chinese calendar. The origin of Chinese New Year is itself thousands of years old and gains significance on account of several myths and traditions, whereas, Christmas is barely 1,600 years old.
Christmas in China is a strange affair. The trappings of the festival are all around festooning the shops, offices and public spaces. We see the usual tat; glitter, greenery, ribbons, images of Santa, reindeer, Santa hats and snowy vistas, but who is it for? Surely not for the average Chinese man and woman on the street? They have a veritable smorgasbord of festivals of their own from which to choose, including of course Chinese New Year itself.
The celebration of Spring Festival goes back more than 4,000 years, originating from the time of Emperor Yao. According to the history of the festival, one day around 2000 B.C., Yao took the throne and led members of his court to worship the heaven and the earth. Since then, people began to take that day as beginning of the year and marked it the first day of the first lunar month. This, of course, is the simplistic version with many other myths and traditions coming together to make up the whole festival.
The modern Western Christmas also shares a quite convoluted history tied up in paganism and burgeoning Christianity. It was not until about the 4th Century that Pagan and Christian leaders agreed that the old festival of Saturnalia, held in December with its concluding day being December 25th, could also be used as the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Thus, Christ
