The Lunar New Year is an international holiday celebrated in many Asian countries but not all. People may know the holiday as Chinese New Year, Vietnam"s Tết Nguyên Đán or South Korea’s Seollal. The United States is also home to some celebrations. Overall, over about 1.5 billion people across the world will take part in the festivities.

“In this day, for many Asian countries, Lunar New Year is perhaps the equivalent of Thanksgiving or Christmas”, - Eddy Keming Chen, philosophy professor and faculty member of the Chinese Studies Program at University of California, San Diego, told USA TODAY.

Unlike the Gregorian calendar – which has Jan. 1 as the beginning of the new year – Lunar New Year doesn’t always start on the same day. The reason for that is the calendar is based on the moon"s 12 phases. Each phase lasts around 29 days, the full calendar is around 354 days long.

This Lunar New Year will be on Feb. 1. The 2023 new year will start Jan. 22.

Just like how people celebrate Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 each year, Lunar New Year allows people to put the past behind and look forward to a fresh start.

“We want to send away all the bad things, evil spirits”, - Xiaohua Yang, professor and director of the China Business Studies Initiative at the University of San Francisco, told USA TODAY. “This is a new start, so now we welcome it with new energy”.