Chinese New Year 2015 begins today (Thursday 19 February) and ends on the 5th of March... that is a lot of fury! And why is their new year 2 weeks and I barely get a day off, wtf?!
ummm.. because Chinese New Year is more important to most Chinese families, than Thanksgiving-and-Christmas-combined would be to
most American families. It is the one time a year that families separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, and perhaps several layers of social strata, etc, come together for a special reunion dinner, and the married family members give red packets (hong bao / ang pow - little envelopes with cash inside) to the children - and sometimes to adults younger than themselves.. there are many many deep-seated and culturally significant traditions that take place during this period of more than a week, and because of the diaspora of Chinese workers, as well as the scattering of family members from rural village to urban supercities like Shanghai and Guangzhou, this long break is necessary to allow travel to and from each person's traditional family hometown (or wherever they've agreed to gather for the festivities).. Sorry for the long description lol. and from the perspective of an Ang Moh (caucasian - literally "red hair") raised in the greater China region, and married to a girl who is two generations removed from mainland China, due to the chinese diaspora that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th century, and changed the face of southeast asia from malayo-polynesian (indonesian, malay, timorese, native taiwanese, indigenous filipino tribes) and mon-khmer (burmese, shan, all manner of indochina hill tribes, khmer themselves, etc) to a vaguely chinese mix in many cases, and definitely a more connected regional mindset, which prevails today...
so, we can't compare the gregorian New Year's Day, celebrated by western europeans and americans, australians, new zealanders, and every other manner of similar groups, with Chinese New Year, except for the fact that they both mark the start of a calendar year, solar and lunar, respectively. other than that, they serve totally different purposes and are not equally important to their respective adherents. *sneaks away, embarrassed by his super-OT, TLDR post*
TLDR version: chinese new year is more like a mega-thanksgiving-familyreunion-foodfest-giftgiving-biggestdayoftheyear, than something like the western "New Year", so appropriate time off from work is given.