Chinese New Year 2024. What New Year means across cultures.

I want to make a biological point before a cultural one.

The human calendar is not one calendar. There are approximately forty different calendar systems currently in use around the world, based on different astronomical phenomena — the solar year, the lunar year, the lunisolar combination. The Gregorian calendar most of the world uses for civil purposes is based on the solar cycle. The Chinese calendar is lunisolar — it tracks both the moon and the sun and produces a year that varies in length, which is why the Chinese New Year falls on a different Gregorian date each year.

The biological relevance of this is that humans have always tracked time. Every culture on earth has developed systems for marking the passage of seasons, for naming the years, for celebrating the turning points. This is not accidental. The biological need to organise time — to understand where we are in the year's cycle, to anticipate what is coming — is deeply embedded in human cognition.

The lunar calendar has been tracking human time for six thousand years. The children who learn that there is more than one way to mark a year learn something important about the relativity of all such systems.

The lunar calendar has been tracking human time for six thousand years. The children who learn that there is more than one way to mark a year learn something important about the relativity of all such systems.

The children who learn that there is more than one way to mark a year learn something important about the relativity of all such systems.