Spring Festival， the new year of Chinese traditional calendar， is one of the major traditional national holidays in China. In ancient times， people called the Spring Festival as New Year.

In order to rejoice at the New Year， people wished others a happy new year and blessed heartily. Some stuck calligraphies full of joy on doors， most of which were antithetical couplets and phrases， such as: blessing， longevity， luckiness， propitious New Year and so on. Whereas， some people pasted paper-cuts for window decorations to do away with the old and set up the new. The patterns of paper-cuts mainly consisted of figures， flowers， characters， any of the twelve animals representing the twelve Earthly Branches， and other animals.

It was in recent times that people called the New Year as the Spring Festival. Although China had conducted legislative reform for several times， Chinese traditional calendar was still applied. Only after the Revolution of 1911， the Gregorian calendar had begun to be applied. For distinguishing two new years in Gregorian calendar and Chinese traditional calendar， additionally， the new year in Chinese traditional calendar is around the Beginning of Spring， so people termed the new year in Chinese traditional calendar as the Spring Festival.

春節(jié)，中國(guó)的傳統(tǒng)新年，在中國(guó)是主要的傳統(tǒng)國(guó)家節(jié)日之一。在古代，人們把春節(jié)叫做新年。

為了慶祝新年，人們都給他人一個(gè)新年快樂(lè)的真心祝福。許多寫滿歡樂(lè)的春聯(lián)貼在門上，大多數(shù)都是字母押韻的句子或詞語(yǔ)，比如祝福，長(zhǎng)壽，幸運(yùn)，吉利等等。同時(shí)，許多人都把剪紙貼到窗戶上，代表著辭舊迎新。窗花的形式主要有人物，花，字母，以及十二生肖或者其他動(dòng)物圖案。

近年來(lái)人們開(kāi)始把新年叫做春節(jié)。雖然中國(guó)已經(jīng)經(jīng)歷了好幾次法制改革，但中國(guó)傳統(tǒng)的農(nóng)歷依然有效。而公歷是在1911年的革命之后才開(kāi)始運(yùn)用的。為了分辨公歷和農(nóng)歷的新年，再加上農(nóng)歷新年在一年春季的開(kāi)始，所以人們把農(nóng)歷新年叫做春節(jié)。