Chinese New Year 2014 falls on Jan. 31, but the solar calendar rolled over on Jan. 1. Why? Lunar and solar calendars just don't fit together neatly. In 2014, the Chinese New Year falls on Jan. 31, a full month after the western calendar celebrated New Year's Day on Jan. 1. Skip to next paragraph In Pictures China's landmarks Subscribe Today to the Monitor Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS ofThe Christian Science MonitorWeekly Digital Edition Not only do the New Year celebrations not match up this year, they never will: Chinese custom dictates that the winter solstice falls in the 11th month, so the lunar new year begins on the second new moon after that, falling between Jan. 21 and Feb. 20. But the calendar mismatch goes deeper than that. It's all about astronomy. The Chinese calendar, like the Hebrew and Muslim calendars, is a lunar calendar. Lunar calendars, as the name implies, are based on the orbits of the moon around the Earth. It actually only takes the ...