Chinese New Year - Why is the Date Always Changing?
Have you wondered why China's Lunar New Year celebration is never on January 1st and changes every year? That’s because instead of using the Gregorian (solar) Calendar with 12 months and 365 days a year (366 every leap year), China also use a different type of calendar for their traditional festivals— a lunar calendar. A lunar calendar is based on the cycles of the moon phases. More specifically, Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar. With similar months based on lunar cycle, lunisolar calendars also include intercalation (insertion of a leap day, week or month into some calendar years) to bring them into general agreement with the Gregorian calendar. So, in this sense, when 12 lunar months are up, here comes the Chinese New Year! As you could figure, there will always be a gap between the Chinese New Year and the ordinary January 1 New Year because the Chinese New Year date is different from year to year. Another fun fact is that in China a lunar month is always 30 day...