Resources for Lunar New Year
from the Multicultural Calendar
From the Multicultural Calendar
For a list of the upcoming religious and cultural observances, please visit our Multicultural Calendar, which serves as a valuable resource to foster understanding, accommodation, and respect for religious and cultural observances. It helps students, staff, and faculty plan events, activities, meetings, retreats, and courses throughout the year.
If you have updates, corrections, or suggestions for the calendar, please contact us at diversityeducation@ucdavis.edu. All submissions will be carefully reviewed for inclusion.
In support of our patients, faculty, employees, students, and community members we would like to share the following resources for awareness, care, and guidance around accommodations to consider when hosting gatherings and/or meetings where food is provided during upcoming observances. We will be elevating the observances of various faith groups throughout the 2024-25 academic year, as part of a broader effort to elevate understanding and recognition of religious, faith-based, and spiritual identity.
Lunar New Year / Chinese New Year / Tet / Spring Festival is the most important of traditional holidays throughout Asia. It is celebrated by the many, including but not limited to Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kongers, Macanese, Singaporeans, Thai, Cambodian, Indonesian, Malaysian, Mauritian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist cultures. Lunar New Year begins a fifteen-day festival and is celebrated as a national, cultural, and familial holiday, as well as a religious holiday for those practicing. Family reunions with thanksgiving and remembrance of departed relatives take place. Traditionally a religious ceremony honors Heaven and Earth.
Regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the Lunar New Year vary widely. Often, the evening preceding Lunar New Year's Day is an occasion for families to gather for the annual reunion dinner. It is also traditional for every family to thoroughly cleanse the house, to sweep away any ill-fortune and to make way for good incoming luck. Windows and doors will be decorated with red color paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes of good fortune or happiness, wealth and longevity. Other activities include lighting firecrackers and giving money in red paper envelopes.
The date corresponds to the New Moon in Aquarius, which can fall from late January to mid-February.
Recommendations for Accommodation
We recommend avoiding scheduling important academic deadlines, events, and activities on this date.
Additional resources:
The Multicultural Calendar serves as a valuable resource to foster understanding, accommodation, and respect for religious and cultural observances. It helps students, staff, and faculty plan events, activities, meetings, retreats, and courses throughout the year.
Additional information on accommodations for faith-based and cultural observances at UC Davis Health
Resources for understanding: religious, faith-based, and spiritual identity