Everything you need to know about Lunar New Year 2025

2025 is the Year of the Snake!

What is Lunar New Year?

Lunar New Year is a big celebration of the start of the lunar calendar. Some of the celebrations include dancing dragons, fireworks and amazing food.

Find out your zodiac animal, make some tasty festive treats and quiz yourself about dragons on CBBC.

What is the Lunar calendar?

Lunar New Year celebrations (as there are many) normally use either a lunar calendar or a lunisolar calendar.

In the UK, the standard calendar is the Gregorian Calendar (based on a calendar from the Roman Empire) which is a solar calendar. This means we track the date based on Earth’s orbit around the sun.

In China, Japan and other countries, the standard calendar is either a Lunar or a lunisolar calendar. A lunar calendar tracks the date based on the phases of the moon. Whereas a lunisolar calendar tracks the date using both the sun and the moon.

There are many reasons why different people use different calendars, it's mostly because a calendar is a made-up system we decide as a community to follow, based on something that never really changes, like how quickly we orbit the sun or how fast shadows move across the moon.

If you were to make your own calendar, what would it be based around? Let us know in the comments below!

Is Chinese New Year the same as Lunar New Year?

Lunar New Year is the more widely used name for the new year festivities for many different countries, including Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, whereas Chinese New Year contains a lot of Lunar New Year traditions related to China's history and culture.

Chinese New Year is also known as the Spring Festival (Chūn Jié 春节), and marks the beginning of the spring season. The Lantern Festival (Yuán Xiāo Jié 元宵节) marks the final day of Chinese New Year. You can learn more about it here.

Which animal is it this Lunar New Year?

2025 is the Year of the Snake! 🐍

The snake is the symbol of wisdom and transformation, so, this is a good year to get into a new hobby or learn a new skill!

What are zodiac animals?

The zodiac animals are a way of representing twelve years in the Chinese zodiac calendar. There is a new animal of the year in each year of the Chinese zodiac calendar until all twelve animals have had their turn, and then the cycle repeats. It’s a way of keeping a twelve-year cycle (known as the Zodiac cycle).

What is the zodiac calendar:

The zodiac calendar is a 60-year cycle, made up of twelve animals, 10 Heavenly Stems (which are the elements) and 8 Earthly Branches. These all combine together to make a super special animal every year, which could be a wood rat, a water snake or a fire horse.

What are the Chinese zodiac animals?

The twelve animals of the Chinese Lunar New Year calendar are:

🐲 Like dragons? Take this quiz! How much do you know about Chinese dragons?

🐕 Want to find out which is your Chinese zodiac animal? Find out now!

Where do Chinese New Year animals come from?

The Chinese zodiac animals come from a mythological story from the Han Dynasty, where the Jade Emperor held a contest to decide which animal should be included in the calendar. The winner of the race was the rat, and that’s why it was the first of the twelve animals in each twelve-year cycle.

What do the elements mean in the zodiac?

The elements in the zodiac calendar are the Heavenly Stems, which represent each element twice with both a Yin and a Yang version:

The elements:

You can find out which element your birth year is by what number the year ends with:

Want to find out which is your Chinese zodiac animal? Find out now!

What are Hóngbāo?

Hóngbāo (紅包) (also known as Laisee (利是) in Cantonese) are beautifully designed red envelopes filled with money, which symbolise good luck. It's a common tradition in Chinese New Year to give out these envelopes to friends and family in order to wish them well for the new yer ahead.

Try making your own Hóngbāo to give to your friends and family during Lunar New Year!

You could also try making some veggie prosperity dumplings to wish people wealth in their future!

Dragons are an important symbol in China, representing power, good luck and strength. 🐲

The Dragon Dance is a tradition in Chinese New Year, where many people move about a long dragon puppet, with each person taking a segment. By dancing in time with the music and in relation to other people in the puppet, it makes it look like this very long dragon is dancing all by itself.

Try this quiz all about Chinese dragons.

Check out the best Lunar New Years games and quizzes, only on the CBBC website: