When you’ve grown up in a Western culture, you probably think that New Year’s Day on January 1st is a festival celebrated everywhere. After all, January 1st is the same all over the world so the new year starts at the same time everywhere. This is half true as the Gregorian Calendar (the 12 month calendar we now use) is used all over the world for commercial, transport and communications purposes. But a lot of cultures still keep a place for their own calendar and most of us know that Chinese New Year, for example, does not fall on the same day as the Gregorian Calendar.

 

假如你是在西方文化下長大的人,應該會認為每年的1月1日不管在哪個地方都是個盛大慶祝的節日.終究1月1日在全世界任何地方都是一年的開始.不過這並不是完全正確的,雖然現在格里高里曆(我們現在所使用的新曆)被我們普遍所使用,不管是在商業,交通與通訊上都是,但是有許多其他地方的文化仍然保有他們故有的日曆,就像中國的舊曆上的日期就與格里高里曆上的不同.