January 29th marks the beginning of Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival — a time of community and celebration around the globe, including China, Korea, Vietnam, and the U.S. Rooted in lunisolar calendars across East and Central Asia–most often the Chinese Lunar calendar and related variants–Lunar New Year starts with the second new moon after the winter solstice. In 2025, the Lunar New Year starts on Wednesday January 29th and lasts until the end of the lunar cycle (February 26th). This international holiday is observed by around 2 billion people across the globe. In China, the celebration is called chūnjié, or “Spring Festival”. In Korean, the celebration is called Seollal, while in Vietnamese it is Tết, or Tết Nguyên Đán. In the United States, Lunar New Year celebrations are a vital part of many American communities.
The Year of the Snake
In 2025, we will enter the Year of the Snake in the Chinese zodiac, regarded as clever and wise (https://chinesenewyear.net/lunar-new-year-2025-guide-year-of-the-snake/)
If you’re curious to learn about Lunar New Year using CSUN Library’s collections, you might try using it as a key phrase or searching related terms in OneSearch. There are many aspects to explore — from the economic impacts of celebrations, to environmental studies on the use of fireworks in festivals, to lesson plan development and art projects for children, to the impact of the year’s zodiac on birthing rates! Here’s a sample of interesting catalog records related to Lunar New Year and the Dragon zodiac sign from our collection:
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Ai Weiwei. Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Bronze. Bronze, 2010. Private Collection, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.9008457.
- Deal, L., & Leubsdorf, B. (2022). Lunar New Year : fact sheet ([Library of Congress public edition].). Congressional Research Service.
- Delgado, M. (2018). Case Example of a Festival: San Francisco Chinatown’s Lunar New Year Festival. In Celebrating Urban Community Life (pp. 154–163). University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442621855-011
If you’d like to find stories about Lunar New Year for children, be sure to browse the book display in the Teacher Curriculum Center! (2nd floor of the Library, East wing) The University Library wishes our community an auspicious new year!
