The Chinese New Year celebrations end with what festival on the 15th day?

The Chinese New Year celebrations traditionally end with the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first lunisolar month.

The Lantern Festival falls at the first full moon of the new year and usually occurs in February or early March on the Gregorian calendar. Its Chinese name, Yuanxiao Jie, refers to the festival’s traditional association with the first month’s fifteenth night. The date makes it both a closing celebration and a bright nighttime counterpart to the family-centered festivities that begin the new year.

Common observances include carrying or displaying lanterns, solving riddles written on them, watching lantern spectacles and eating tangyuan or yuanxiao—glutinous-rice dumplings commonly served in sweet fillings. Lanterns are often red, a color associated with good fortune.

The festival has roots reaching back more than 2,000 years, with later traditions linked to Han-dynasty court practices and Buddhist temple lantern lighting. It should not be confused with the Mid-Autumn Festival, another lunar holiday sometimes informally associated with lanterns in parts of Southeast Asia.