Chinese Looney New Year
The Chinese, like most of the rest of the peoples of the world, have a mid-winter celebration. Such festivals undoubtedly pre-date the Neolithic. There's substantial evidence that most social groups or cultures went into a panic every winter over whether the sun would return to its summer intensity. People feared that the nights would continue to grow longer and colder and life would end for their little group. (A reasonable concern when you're dodging glaciers in the middle of an ice-age wrapped in tree bark.)
This dilemma was apparently attributed to the notion that the tribe or a tribal member had displeased one of the local deities thus incurring its wrath in the form of a nasty winter. In an attempt to stave off a frigid, starving fate or enslavement by some tribe who hadn't been abandoned by their particular godling, the shamans (shamen?), whose job it was to get the locals 'off the hook', would do their shamanistic 'thang': a personal ritual typically involving a sacrificial offering of flesh to the offended deity.
Surprise, surprise! These rituals always worked and the cycle of spring to summer to fall resumed unabated. (Hooray!) As timing is everything, even in the shaman business, these rituals were normally conducted on or close to the winter solstice: the longest night of the year. The days grow longer and the nights shorter after this date each year. The worst was over. Call it coincidence. The god was placated, the people partied heartily in their finest tree-bark couture and the shaman was awarded his bonus. (He got to live.)
According to the Julian/Gregorian calendar, based as it is on the orbit of the earth around the sun, (Thank you, Mr Kopernik.), the winter solstice is the night of December 20/21. Consequently, the winter celebrations of Christmas, Chanukah, the Saturnalia, Kwanzaa and after Christmas sales are held towards the end of December. But not the Chinese New Year celebration. Not CNY.
Unlike most of the rest of the world, the Chinese still base their social calendar on the orbit of the moon around the earth and the cycle of the phases of the moon. (Some psychotic god-emperor probably had their own version of Mr Kopernik drowned for insubordination in a vat of soy sauce. Don't quote me on that.) As a result, the Chinese mid-winter festival, the Chinese Lunar New Year, a five-day period of celebration (and a rather manic attempt at relaxation) takes place sometime between the end of January and beginning of March depending on all manner of convoluted calendrical finagling by the current shaman-esque types.
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