In many homes, doors and windowpanes get a new coat of red paint during the Spring Festival. All the door panels will be pasted with Spring Festival couplets, highlighting Chinese calligraphy with black characters on red paper about a foot long in black or gold ink, giving an atmosphere of rejoicing and festivity. 

    A couplet is made up of two lines of verse which are called the "head" and the "tail" respectively and which should correspond with each other phonologically and syntactically, word for word and phrase for phrase. The themes of the verses would suggest good fortune, longevity and, traditionally, male offspring.