If you’re in the mood for a minor headache today, I suggest you do a quick study of the lunar calendar and try to explain it to a friend.  Even the article I read in Wikipedia, which usually clears things right up for me, left me scratching my head.  The reason I mention this because there are two major groups in the world today who still use the lunar calendar – the Chinese and the Muslims – and both of them represent a majority of Xinjiang’s population.  Over the next two months each of these groups will be celebrating a holiday determined on the lunar calendar.

Chinese New Year:

Although it is, without a doubt, the largest and most popular Chinese holiday, it’s such a pain to figure out when it is exactly.  If you live in China or have Chinese friends you should have some fun and ask them when the Chinese New Year is this year to see if they can tell you the date.  Odds are they might be able to tell you a general time (“Uh…sometime towards the end of January, I think?“), but rarely the exact date.

Why is this so difficult?  While most Chinese are now beginning to live and work under the Gregorian calendar like the rest of the world, they continue to celebrate New Year based on their own lunar calendar.  This means that while the Chinese New Year is always somewhere in January or February, it’s never the same day on consecutive years.  Very few people I know here in China keep up with the lunar date – check that, NOBODY I know here keeps up with the lunar calendar – so everyone waits for the government or the news organizations to tell them when to celebrate New Year’s.  It’s quite frustrating to figure out when the school year ends because it’s never the same each year.

**Find out when the next Chinese New Year with this handy calendar**

Muslim Corban Festival (aka Eid al-Adha):

The entire reason I’m talking about this today is because this Tuesday we will be celebrating the Corban Festival here in Xinjiang.  This festival is a public holiday for the entire province, meaning that while everybody else in China will be working Tuesday, all of us over here have the day off.  If you happen to be Muslim, you get Wednesday and Thursday off, too.  There’s a lot to explain about the celebration of this holiday here in Xinjiang, but I’m going to hold off on that until this Tuesday when we get a little better grasp of it ourselves.

If you ask a Muslim, they might tell you that their holidays are on the same day every year – and according to the Islamic calendar (also a lunar calendar) they are.  But the difference between the Islamic and Gregorian calendar means that for those of us who aren’t Muslims, all the Muslim holidays magically move about 11 days earlier each year.  If your math isn’t too rusty you can easily calculate that this means that any given Muslim holiday makes its way through each of the 4 seasons every 33 years.  Back in 2000 this holiday we’re celebrating on Tuesday was celebrated on March 16th. Interesting, huh?

**Find out when the next Corban Festival will be celebrated with this annual list**

At Least the Rest of Us aren’t Crazy, Right?

All of this kind of makes my head spin, to be honest.  I’m a bit happy to know that next year all of my holidays will be easy to figure out.  Thanksgiving will still fall on the 4th Thursday in November, Christmas will still be on December 25th, the 4th of July will be on, well, you know, and Easter will be on…

…oh, shoot.  I guess we are crazy after all.