Each year, hundreds of people fill the streets of Chicago’s Chinatown and Uptown neighborhoods to celebrate the Lunar New Year with parades featuring vibrant colors, festive floats and dancing.
The Lunar New Year, also called the Spring Festival, is one of the most important holidays in Asian communities around the world. Following the lunar calendar, the festival begins with the first new moon of the year and celebrates the turning of winter toward the coming spring. This year it falls on Jan. 29, 2025, and begins the year of the snake.
The Chinatown festival is said to date back to Chicago’s first Chinese immigrants, who settled first in the Loop and then farther south to the area around Cermak Road and Wentworth Avenue…