The official celebration begins at midnight. Families offer fruits, sweets, and rice cakes to the gods and their ancestors. They also burn paper money, an offering they believe will become available to the gods/their ancestors in the heavens.
In the past, traditional families considered it merciful to not eat meat for breakfast, and some families carry on this tradition today. After breakfast, they often visit elderly members of their families, their friends, or local temples. When friends come to visit, hosts treat them to candy or sweet tea, which represent happiness. After partaking of this offering, guests will extend their best wishes to their hosts for the new year. If guests' children come along, the hosts will offer them red envelopes (containing money) as tokens of good luck, health, and a prosperous year.
Because all wish for the best start possible to the new year, those who are superstitious (or simply follow tradition) do their best to avoid anything purported to bring bad luck. For example, before Chinese New Year begins, all traditional families clean their houses very thoroughly, in order to sweep out all the bad luck and make room for good fortune. However, for the first five days of Chinese New Year, no one sweeps the floor or takes the garbage out, so as not to take any good luck out of the house. People try to use knives as little as possible, because that might cut (negatively affect) their good luck.
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