Chinese New Year nowdays begins from the first day of every lunar year. However, before Han dynasty (960 - 1279), the festival was celebrated at different times. Ancient Chinese used lunar calendar, which was almost as same as Tiangan Dizhi calendar, for agriculture. In addition, many dynasties made their own official calendars for daily using. Xia, the first dynasty of China, made Xia calendar. In the calendar Chinese New Year Day was set as the first day of every lunar year. In the calendar of Zhou dynasty, the second Chinese dynasty, however, the first day of december was set as Chinese New Year Day. In the calendars of the two following dynasties, Shang and Qin dynasty, Chinese New Year Day were set even one month earlier respectively. Thus in Qin dynasty, which inherited the calendar of Zhou dynasty, Chinese celebrated Chinese New Year from the first of October of every lunar year. In 150 BC, the emperor Han Wudi, Liu Che, of Han dynasty set Chinese New Year Day back to its original time, the first day of every lunar year. This setting was used until now.
On another side, Chinese traditional Spring festival was always celebrated on the first day of every spring until 1914. Normally, the first day of every spring, is 4-5 days later than the first day of every lunar year. In ancient China, Spring festival was a very grand festival because China was a agricultural land and worshipping spring was an very important event for the people. On every Spring festival, both the emperor and people worshipped the heaven and season, and held certain celebration activities. Comparing with Chinese New Year, Spring festival was more religious and solemn.
In 1914, the Chinese governor, the warlord Yuan Shikai, fused Chinese New Year festival and Spring festival into one, that is, Spring festival and Chinese New Year were celebrated as a same festival. Since then, Chinese New Year is also called as Spring festival. However, until today many Chinese still celebrate the original Spring festival. The most common celebration activities for celebrating the original Spring festival are whipping spring ox and eating spring cake or spring roll.