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Têt Nguyên DánVietnamese Lunar New Year Festival
The Vietnamese Lunar New Year Festival, Tet Nguyen Dan, literally means the first morning of the first day of the new year, and it marks the beginning of spring. It is celebrated with family, feasting, and fireworks, and it is so consuming and filling that the expression for celebrating Tet is literally to "eat" Tet. Preparations begin on the twenty-third day of the twelfth lunar month, with the Feast of the Kitchen Gods or Lź Tįo Quān. This is the day that the three Kitchen Gods leave earth to make their report to the Jade Emperor on the family’s activities for the year. The family pays tribute to these spirits in hopes of a favorable report with offerings of sacrificial gold paper as well as a carp for them to ride back to heaven. The next day, a New Year’s Tree, or Cāy Nźu, which is a bamboo pole stripped of its leaves and then wrapped in red paper and decorated with clay bells, is "planted" in front of the house to protect the household from evil spirits while the Kitchen Gods are away making their report. It is taken down on the seventh day of the new year with a ritual called Le Khai Ha. Families spend the time before the new year cleaning and painting their homes, buying new clothes, paying off debts, resolving disagreements, tidying ancestral graves, and decorating their homes with yellow Hoa Mai blossoms, which represent spring, and Cau Doi couplets, which express the family’s wishes for the new year. They also choose Tet trees, or tac, which are cone-shaped fruit trees with miniature oranges pruned to ripen around the first day of the new year.
On this first day of the New Year, people are very careful about what they do as they believe that events of this day will determine their luck for the rest of the year. Everyone wears new clothes, family members exchange gifts, children receive red envelopes of lucky money, offerings are made to ancestors, and Buddhists visit local temples to pray for health and prosperity. Taboos to avoid include arguments, foul or negative language, children fighting or crying, sweeping, throwing out trash, cutting, chopping, or cooking (three days of cooking are done by New Year’s Eve). The first day is for visiting relatives. The first visitor to the house is significant, so some families arrange in advance to make sure that that first visitor is rich, happy, and prestigious. Other "firsts" that provide portents of what is to come include the first words heard, uttered, or written on this day.
In America, Vietnamese American communities have also organized Tet festivals to preserve and promote the Vietnamese tradition of celebrating the New Year. The festivities may include lion or unicorn dances, parade dragons, traditional dance and music performances, beauty pageants, and more.
Further InformationThe two images included here, "Tet Festival Parade" and "Strings of firecrackers scare away evil spirits," are used courtesy of the Union of Vietnamese Student Associations of Southern California (UVSA), whose mission is to help students succeed in their academic endeavors, adjust to American society, preserve their Vietnamese heritage, and gain credibility in the Vietnamese refugee community in order to efficiently serve the public and contribute to the rebuilding of a free and democratic homeland. It has been organizing the Tet Festival in Southern California’s Little Saigon since 1982, which has raised over $100,000 for the Vietnamese community in America and in overseas refugee camps.
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Midnight of New Year’s Eve, or
Giao Thua, is the time for the Le Tru Tich festival,
which ushers out the spirits of the old year with drums, gongs,
and firecrackers, and welcomes back the Kitchen Gods for the new
year. Everybody stays awake for fear of "losing one year," and the
morning greetings and prayers begin right after
midnight.
Special food eaten at Tet include
Bahn Day, a round rice cake which represents the sky; and
Bahn Chung, a square rice cake stuffed with bean baste and
ground meat, which represents the earth. 