New year belongs to us

Let’s step back from Chinese New Year, Lunar New Year debate

By Lindsey Lam, February 24, 2026 

Growing up, I celebrated two new years every year.  

The first happens Jan, 1, with a ball drop across the country, that doesn’t actually drop, and fireworks blasting all through the night in my neighborhood, despite a firework ban. It resets the calendar at the bottom right-handcorner of my laptop and forces me to scribble out the last digit of the date on every assignment for at least a month. 

The second new year happens on a different date every year. Most times, I wake up, go to school, work, celebrate with a family dinner and go to bed before it’s too late, so I’m not tired for the day ahead. I wear red on my wrist, but never a red shirt in fear of standing out too much. I don’t always make it to the temple on the exact day, but I hope the deities understand and forgive me. 

And yet, as I face all these obligations on a day vital to my culture, there is a decade-long debate raging in the background: Lunar New Year? Or Chinese New Year? For those looking for an answer, here it is: it depends. 

The celebration comes from the Chinese lunisolar calendar, which celebrates the coming of spring or “Spring Festival.” For many families like mine, we use the term Chinese New Year to celebrate the coming of spring.  

However, the same event is celebrated across Asia: in South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, the Philippines, and so many more, all with different practices, beliefs and meanings. South Korea’s Seollal is not the same asVietnam’s Tet, and Tet is not the same as China’s Spring Festival.  

To accommodate so many cultures, institutions and brands are advised to use the name “Lunar New Year” as a catch-all term to avoid centering China, and some have begun using “Lunisolar New Year” for more accuracy with the lunisolar calendar. Both seem to be the widely accepted as the default term for people to use. 

If that’s your concern, you can stop reading now. You’ll only be proving the point I’m about to make. 

But those terms are too broad to capture the different, deep cultures that are pushed to fit under them, and they end up blurring identities. It feels as though specificity and the effort in understanding all our cultures seeminconvenient and risky, and I don’t exactly blame them. In our world of cancel culture, the safest option will always win. 

And, amid all that, the people who observe the holiday are still waking up early the next morning for work or school, with no real celebration or space for their culture. 

The truth is, Asians hardly ever take up space when it comes to cultural discourse. This stems from two things: stereotypes and survival.  

We are labeled as quiet and agreeable. The model minority myth exemplifies us as successful but reserved. When there is controversy, we are expected to endure it.  

And for many of us immigrant families, laying low wasn’t the social norm. It was survival and safety. 

So, when social media erupts each year what to call the holiday, it feels more like an annual, endless debate than a search for understanding. Because the truth is, there is no real term we can use to describe the holiday in all its depths. 

But, America likes that. America likes having a single, clean answer. Something for brands to quickly slap into a headline, so it can focus on more relevant topics. But that simply cannot happen. Culture rarely fits into a single, simple label, but the debate continues usually without Asian voices in the room. 

If the goal is to include all Asian culture, the answer isn’t just choosing the “right” phrase. It’s asking communities what feels right for them and understanding that sometimes the answer may be different.  

It’s letting Chinese families call it Chinese New Year if it’s right for them. It’s acknowledging different countries’ traditions without blending them into vagueness. It’s understanding how people talk about Asian culture and inclusivity require conversations with real Asian people, not just what we think is safest. 

Because for many people, including me, there is little to no exhaustion from the terms. The real exhaustion comes from being corrected about our own culture and from being explained over. It shouldn’t be hard to include Asians in dialogues about themselves. That’s the bare minimum. 

Yet I pause my typing as I hear my mom call me from the kitchen. The prayer table is ready. The offerings of fruit, roasted duck and rice are lined up carefully. This is not a branding exercise. This is not a headline.  

I step forward with three incense sticks between my palms and bow. I thank my ancestors for their protection and guidance. I pray for a year with fewer hospital visits, fewer hate crimes and fewer moments of keeping my mouth shut to keep the peace.  

When we finish, we gather around and eat the offerings. Our laughter and conversations fill the house, and, for that moment, the online arguments and articles all fade away into the back of my mind. 

Because while strangers debate what to call this day, we are living it: billions of us, across continents, languages and histories, celebrating the end of the darkest days of the year.

The debate will return tomorrow. It will return next year. It always does. But at this moment, I am reminded that the holiday does not belong to comment sections or marketing teams. It belongs to us. 

If you celebrate this holiday, happy new year. May the year of the Fire Horse bring you glory, change, steadfastness and, more importantly, the strength to endure not just the year ahead but the endless Chinese New Year vs. Lunar New Year arguments debates that seem to follow it.