The Year of the Snake has started, and the vibes are all about renewal and regeneration.  

Lunar New Year — which includes Chinese New Year, Seollal in Korea, Tet in Vietnam and more — begins on Jan. 29, kicking off more than two weeks of parties, customs and copious feasts.

The holiday, also known as the Spring Festival, celebrates the arrival of spring and the start of a fresh year based on the Chinese lunisolar calendar.

Though the snake may get a bad rap across many Western cultures, the animal is actually a celebrated and revered sign across the Eastern hemisphere. And its year is expected to be one of positive transformation as people slither into new beginnings — if they’re willing to move on. 

It’s all about “shedding toxicity in personality, in character traits,” said Jonathan H. X. Lee, an Asian and Asian American studies professor at San Francisco State University whose research focuses in part on Chinese folklore. 

“It’s shedding the ego, letting go of the past, letting go of anger, letting go of love lost,” Lee said. “This is the year where that kind of growth — personal and macro, internal and external — is very much possible.”

Lee said that the snake is an auspicious sign for inner work, whether it’s releasing unrealistic expectations of loved ones or getting rid of bad habits. 

The snake, which matches up with the years of people born in 1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001, 2013 and 2025, is most commonly associated with intelligence, resilience and love, Lee said. And people born in those years are thought to do “whatever it takes to accomplish a goal.” 

“They are known to have this innate potential to be really successful, because they can think outside the box, and they will endure and they will persevere,” Lee said. 

More  specifically, this year is that of the wood snake, with the wood element holding profound meaning across the three major organized Chinese religions. In Daoism, the wood is a sign of returning to one’s natural state or true nature, while in Confucianism it symbolizes becoming a more polished person. In Buddhism, it’s associated with letting go for growth. 

The positive qualities attached to the snake are anchored in two folklore tales, Lee explained. In the story of the creation of the Chinese zodiac, the snake was once a four-legged, happy creature who became angry after other animals isolated him because of his appearance. Blaming the Jade Emperor for creating him that way, the snake’s anger morphed into physiological changes, like growing fangs, and prompted him to snap at the other creatures.

Word reached the Jade Emperor, who punished him by taking away his legs. The heavenly ruler promised that if the snake won a race competition against the other animals, which would eventually dictate the order of the zodiac, the snake could win a prize and potentially get his legs back. 

Though the snake didn’t win, he placed sixth, impressing the emperor with his perseverance and dedication. The ruler made him one of the 12 animals of the zodiac. The race changed the snake’s path in other ways, too. 

“He learned how to control that anger. But because that anger was a part of him for so long, he had the yearning to go out and harm and bite,” Lee said. “When that happened, he would stay isolated and … he would grow out of his old skin in order to let go of that past.”

The snake is also associated with love. 

In one retelling of the “Legend of the White Snake,” one of China’s four main great folktales, an immortal white snake, disguised as a maiden, falls in love with a man. The man dies upon discovering her true identity, which prompts her to steal from the tree of immortality in an attempt to revive him. But when she is caught in the act by an emperor who guarded the mystical tree, she explains that her love for the man spans thousands of years because he had saved her life in the past. 

“They had this cosmic connection lifetime after lifetime,” Lee said. 

The emperor was so moved by the love story that he encouraged her to go save her husband. 

“For people that grow up in this kind of cultural landscape with these types of stories and folklore, the snake is a representation of love,” Lee said.