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Chinese New Year is one of the most significant holiday seasons in Singapore. Marking the first day of the year on the Chinese lunar calendar, the date fluctuates from year to year. The celebrations can last for two to three days, and they are colourful and abundant.
Feb 18, 2024 · The public holiday lasts from February 10th to February 17th, during which the New Year's Eve on February 9th and the New Year's Day on February 10th are the peak time of celebration. The commonly known New Year calendar counts from the New Year's Eve to the Lantern Festival on February 24th 2024.
YearsNew Year DatesAnimal Signs2030Feb. 3, 2030 (Sunday)Dog2029Feb. 13, 2029 (Tuesday)Rooster2028Jan. 26, 2028 (Wednesday)Monkey2027Feb. 6, 2027 (Saturday)SheepDec 29, 2021 · One hour later, Baker Island will become the very last place on Earth to enter 2022. Time differences aren't the only way the new year varies around the globe. From breaking dishes in Denmark...
- Michele Debczak
- Overview
- First country to celebrate
- Last country to celebrate
- More time zone madness
- How does Antarctica ring in the new year?
Each day starts at the international date line. But countries are free to observe time as they see fit—resulting in a number of calendar quirks.
Each day on Earth lasts approximately 24 hours. But on New Year’s Eve, it takes a little bit longer than that to wrap up the last day of the year and ring in the new one.
That’s because of a quirk of the international date line, the official starting and ending point of each day. The idea of the date line was introduced at a conference in 1884 in which the world sought to create order with the rise of railroads and international travel. The international date line roughly follows the 180th meridian north to south through the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is located halfway around the world from the prime meridian, which crosses Greenwich, England, in the United Kingdom.
Countries are free to decide which side of the international date line they want to be on—resulting in a line that zigs and zags its way between the North and South Poles.
(New Year isn’t just on January 1. Learn about Lunar New Year.)
Making things even more confusing, countries set their own times. There are currently 38 local times in use, some set off from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) by 30 or 45 minute increments rather than an hour, says Paul Eggert, a computer scientist at the University of California Los Angeles who maintains the authoritative global Time Zone Database.
The first land masses to greet the new year are Kiritimati Island and a string of 10 other mostly uninhabited atolls in the central Pacific Ocean. One of the 33 islands that make up the Republic of Kiribati, Kiritimati is located almost directly south of Hawaii, within the same line of longitude—but celebrates New Year a full day earlier.
(The amazing rebirth of the reefs of Kiribati's Line Islands.)
The last inhabited places to celebrate are the islands of Niue and American Samoa to the southwest of Kiribati in the South Pacific. The day technically ends an hour later in the U.S. territories of Baker Island and Howland Island, but both are uninhabited, Eggert says. (And if no one is there to see the time change, does it really change at all?)
(Learn about Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.)
But there are also plenty of time zone oddities away from the international date line. China, for example, has only one time zone even though geographically the country could have as many as five. The entire country formally observes Beijing time—which has proven an inconvenience for cities like Urumqi, which lies 2,000 miles west of the capital. There, the sun may not rise until 10 a.m. Beijing time.
Eggert says this is why, in practice, the city observes two times simultaneously. “Formally it’s on Beijing time like the rest of China but informally most people run in a separate time,” he says.
(Learn about Hijri, the Islamic New Year.)
This also means that if you cross China’s western border on New Year’s Eve, you might have to set your watch back as much as three-and-a-half hours. Why a half hour? That’s because some countries around the world—including Afghanistan, India, and Burma—use half-hour or quarter-hour deviations from standard time.
Meanwhile, Antarctica may appear to stretch across all of the time zones. But Eggert says that is far from the reality on the ground. Each research station scattered across the continent observes the time of the country that supplies it—meaning McMurdo Station is on New Zealand time (UTC+12) and Palmer is on Chilean time (UTC-3).
But ultimately, Eggert says, “the clock doesn’t really matter at the South Pole. When you’ve got a six-month day and six-month night, time is really arbitrary.”
- January 14th: Little Year (小年 / xiǎo nián) In the past, government officials celebrated this day on the 23rd. Common folk celebrated on the 24th and fishermen on the 25th.
- February 9th: New Year’s Eve (除夕 / chúxì) Depending on the moon cycle, New Year’s Eve either lands on the 29th or 30th of the lunar December. Regardless, this day is also known as the 30th of the year (大年三十 / dà nián sān shí).
- February 10th: Spring Festival (春节 / chūn jié) The original name for this day was Yuán Dàn (元旦), with Yuan meaning “the beginning.” However, Yuan Dan is now used to refer to the New Year of the solar calendar.
- February 11th: To the in-law’s (迎婿日 / yíng xù rì) In northern regions, the events are held on the 3rd. Lunar date. January 2nd (正月初二 / zhēng yuè chū èr) Solar (Gregorian) date.
New Year’s Day is the first day of the calendar year and is celebrated on 1 January each year. The day is marked by a public holiday in Singapore. On 31 December, New Year’s Eve, most people stay up past midnight and celebrate the countdown into the New Year.
Dec 30, 2021 · As many people gear up to celebrate the start of their New Year at the beginning of January, we take a look at how other cultures and countries mark the beginning of a new year.
