Far and away the most important holiday in China is Spring Festival, also known as the Chinese New Year. To the Chinese people it is as important as Christmas to Christian people in the West. The dates for this annual celebration are determined by the lunar calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar, so the timing of the holiday varies from late January to early February. The festival actually begins on the eve of the lunar New Year's Day and ends on the fifth day of the first month of the lunar calendar. But the 15th of the first month, which normally is called the Lantern Festival, means the official end of the Spring Festival in many parts of the country. Preparations for the New Year begin the last few days of the last moon, when houses are thoroughly cleaned, debts repaid, hair cut and new clothes purchased. Houses are festooned with paper scrolls bearing auspicious antithetical couplet and in many homes, people burn incense at home and in the temples to pay respects to ancestors and ask the gods for good health in the coming months. Spring Festival Eve is an important time for family reunions. It is traditional on the last day of the twelfth month by the lunar calendar each year for the entire family to get together for a New Year's Eve dinner. All the members of families come together to feast. Jiaozi, a steamed dumpling is popular in the north, while southerners favor a sticky sweet glutinous rice pudding called nian gao. After dinner, all family members sit together to chat or play games, staying up until early the next morning. In the morning, people make New Year calls on relatives to extend congratulations and give children lucky red packets with money, lai see. During the festival, many people also  attend traditional recreational activities, such as parades with the lion dance, dragon-lantern dance and stilt-walking. "Guo Nian," meaning "passing the year," is the common term among the Chinese people for celebrating the Spring Festival which is actually greeting the new year. At midnight is the transfer of the old and new year, people used to set off fire-crackers which served to drive away the evil spirits and to greet the arrival of the new year. In an instant the whole city would be engulfed in the deafening noise of the firecrackers.