Just in case people wonder why the Chinese take a whole month off for the CNY. Although the CNY officially begins on January 01 (lunar calendar), the holiday season begins on Dec 23, so called "little CNY". Also on this day, the God of stove goes back to the heaven and reports to the heaven emperor about how he human has behaved in the past year. Hence the tradition of cooking sweets on Dec 23. The idea is that the stove God will say good things about you when you put enough sweets in his mouth.
Then it's the actual CNY. This is a huge and long celebration starting from the CNY eve and lasts all the way to the 7th of January (still the lunar calendar). There are traditional events arranged on each of those days. Usually people adhere to these traditions almost religiously.
Then the 15th of January. This is the lantern day, much like the mardi gra, the Chinese version. At night, everybody comes out and goes to downtown, which has been decorated with thousands and thousands of lanterns. Eating, partying, etc... Traditionally, the lantern day had been much bigger than the actual CNY.
This is Dec 23 to Jan 15, nonstop eating, partying, gathering, etc. So as you can imagine, you would be totally exhausted after all this. You would need a couple days to recuperate. So typically, people take the whole month off.
