How do people celebrate Chinese New Year?

The Chinese New Year  is also known as the Spring Festival . It is the most solemn festival of the year for every Chinese and has been celebrated in China for thousands of years, with various forms of activities among the diverse regions of China.
The New Year celebration is centred around removing the bad and the old, and welcoming the new and the good. It's a time to worship ancestors, exorcise evil spirits and pray for good harvest.
Today it's celebrated also by Chinese communities outside the country. Lion dance, dragon dance, temple fairs, flower market shopping and so on are just a few of these rich and colourful activities.
In the run-up to the new year people will clean their houses to get rid of dirt, rubbish and other unwanted items. They will redecorate them with red couplets, lanterns, new flowerpots and furniture, and will shop for foodstuffs for banquet specialities.
The New Year is an important family reunion occasion, so those who are living or working far away would return home prior to the holiday. In China this is now known as Chun Yun (春运 Moving in the Spring): tens of millions of people travel on the country's vast public transport systems or via private means, coming home to be with their loved ones.

How do you celebrate Chinese New Year with friends and family?

Decoration is a big part of Chinese New Year celebration. People spend substantial time and effort to uplift their houses and the immediate surroundings in order to welcome the Gods of Wealth . There are said to be two Gods of Wealth: one God of Civil  and one God of Military .
People fix up paper-cuts  on windows and folk paintings on walls, hang red lanterns in and outside their houses, display couplets  on doors, hang a big Chinese character LUCK  on the main entrance and so on.

What stories and myths are told on Chinese New Year?

There are various mythical stories about the Chinese New Year, popular in different regions of the country.
According to one story, once upon a time there was a world of ghosts. In it there was a mountain with a big peach tree expanding over a vast landscape.
On top of this tree nestled a golden rooster. Each morning when the rooster crowed, all the ghosts would hurriedly return from their night out.
At the entrance to the ghost world sat two Door Gods on each side of the gate. If a returning ghost was found to have done harm or evil the night before,
it would be punished by the Door Gods. This is the origin of the couplets that people display during the Spring Festival: they are believed to have the power of stopping evils and bad luck.
Another story tells of a unicorn beast in ancient times in China. The unicorn was called NIAN (年 Year in Chinese) and was fiercely aggressive. It lived on the sea bottom but would go ashore to loot livestock and hurt people.Every year when it was near the New Year's Eve the villagers, young and old, would escape into the bushes and hide themselves from the beast.
Once, there came an elderly man, who declared he had the magical power of fending off this beast. So one night when the beast appeared again, intending to loot the village, firecrackers suddenly went off from nowhere, explosive and noisy. Then came the elder in a red robe, laughing out loud.
Seeing this the beast became frightened and fled in embarrassment. From then on, every year the villagers would set off fireworks and decorate their homes with red materials.

Gradually this has become a tradition to celebrate the New Year with noisy sounds and red decor.