I would like to introduce Vietnamese lunar new year to
you. Source: VietNam networks
Tết Nguyên Đán, more commonly known by its
shortened name Tết, is the most important and
popular holiday and festival in Vietnam. It is the
Vietnamese New Year which is based on the Chinese
calendar, a lunisolar calendar.
Tết is celebrated on the same day as Chinese New
Year though exceptions arise due to the 1 hour time
difference between Hanoi and Beijing. Tết share
many of the same customs of its Chinese counterpart.
It is celebrated from the first day of the first month
of the Chinese calendar (around late January or early
February) until at least the third day. Many
Vietnamese prepare for Tết by cooking special
holiday foods and cleaning the house. On Tết,
Vietnamese visit their families and temples,
forgetting about the troubles of the past year and
hope for a better upcoming year. Tết
traditionally marks the coming of Spring, so Spring is
sometimes used interchangeably with Tết in
Vietnamese. Nowadays, the term ”Tet” in English is
often associated with the bloody Tết Offensive,
which occurred during Tết in 1968.
Vietnamese people usually return to their families
during Tết. Some return to worship at the family
altar or visit the graves of their ancestors. Others
return to where they grew up. Although Tết is a
universal holiday among all Vietnamese, each region
and religion has its own customs.
Tết in the three Vietnamese regions can be
divided into three periods, known as Tất Niên,
Giao Thừa, and Tân Niên, representing the
preparation before Tết, the eve of Tết,
and the days of and following Tết, respectively.
Tất Niên
Tất Niên offering
Preparations for Tết start months before the
actual celebrations. People try to pay off their debts
in advance so that they can be debt-free on Tết.
Parents buy new clothes for their children so that the
children can wear them when Tết arrives. Because
a lot of commercial activity will cease during the
celebrations, people try to stock up on supplies as
much as possible.
In the days leading up to Tết, the streets and
markets are full of people. Everyone is busy buying
food, clothes, and decorations for their house. If
someone lives far away from home, they will try to
come home to celebrate Tết with their family.
Ceremonies
Vietnamese families usually have a family altar, to
pay respect to their ancestors. During Tết the
altar is thoroughly cleaned and new offerings are
placed there.
Traditionally, the three kitchen guardians for each
house (Ông Táo), return to heaven on the 23rd day of
the last month of the Chinese calendar. They were to
report to the Jade Emperor about the events in that
house over the past year. Their departure is marked by
a modest ceremony where the family offers sacrifices
for them to use on their journey. Often, Vietnamese
families smear honey over the mouth of the image of
Ông Táo, to allow him to say only sweet things of the
family.
In the days leading up to Tết, each family
traditionally cooks special holiday foods such as bánh
chưng and bánh dầy. Preparations for these
foods are quite extensive, and cooking them can take
several days. Family members often take turns to keep
watch on the fire overnight, telling each other
stories about Tết of past years.
Giao Thừa (New Year’s Eve)
Each home is thoroughly swept and decorated with
flowers and offerings for ancestors by the night
before Tết. At midnight, many families
traditionally light firecrackers to welcome the New
Year, though this practice was banned since January 1,
1995 due to safety reasons. In the morning, actual
Tết celebrations begin.
Tân Niên
A boy in front of a tree decorated for Tết
The first day of Tết is reserved for the nuclear
family. In big cities, the streets are usually empty
as most people stay at home or leave the city to visit
their close relatives in the countryside. Children
receive lì xì from their elders. Usually, children don
their new clothes and give their elders the
traditional Tết greetings before receiving the
money. Since the Vietnamese believe that the first
visitor a family receives in the year sets their
fortunes for the entire year, people never enter any
house on the first day without being invited first.
The act of being the first person to enter a house on
Tết is called xông đất or
đạp đất. Usually, people with
happy demeanor or who had experienced luck during the
previous year is invited first into the house. In some
instances, any person with names such as Phúc (happy),
Tài (wealth), Lộc (luck), will be invited to
perform this act of xông đất. However, just
to be safe, the owner of the house will leave the
house a few minutes before midnight and come back just
as the clock strikes midnight just to prevent anyone
else who will potentially bring any unfortunate events
in the new year for the household.
Sweeping during Tết is taboo or xui (unlucky),
since it symbolizes sweeping the luck away. It is also
taboo for anyone who experienced a recent loss of a
family member to visit anyone else during Tết.
During subsequent days, people visit relatives,
friends, and local Buddhist temples to give donations
and to get their fortunes told. Fortune-telling based
on Truyện Kiều is also popular. Children
are free to spend their new money on toys or on
gambling games such as bầu cua cá cọp,
which can be found in the streets. Prosperous families
can pay for dragon dancers to perform at their house.
There are also public performances for everyone to
watch.
Decorations
Each family displays a New Year Tree called cây nêu,
consisting of a bamboo stick 5 to 6 m long. The top
end is usually decorated with many objects, depending
on the locality, including good luck charms, origami
fish, cactus branches, etc.
A kumquat tree is a popular decoration for the living
room during Tết. Its many fruits symbolize the
fertility and fruitfulness that the family hopes will
come in the coming year.
Greetings
The traditional greetings are ”Chúc mừng
năm mới” and ”Cung chúc tân xuân” (Happy
New Year). People also wish each other prosperity and
luck. Common wishes for Tết include:
Sống lâu trăm tuổi (Live up to 100
years): used by children for elders. Traditionally,
everyone is one year older on Tết, so children
would wish their grandparents health and longetivity
in exchange for mừng tuổi or lì xì.
An khang thịnh vượng (Security, good
health, and prosperity)
Vạn sự như ý (A myriad things go
according to your will)
Sức khoẻ dồi dào (Plenty of health)
Cung hỉ phát tài, from the Cantonese Kung hei
fat choi meaning ”Congratulations and be Prosperous”
Tiền vô như nước (Money flow in
like water): used informally .
Food
In Vietnamese, to celebrate Tết is to ăn
Tết, literally meaning ”Tết eating”,
showing the importance of food in its celebration.
Some of the food is also eaten year-round, while other
dishes are only eaten during Tết. Also, the food
is usually vegetaruab since it believed to be bad luck
to eat meat on that day. These food include:
Bánh chưng and Bánh dầy: essentially
tightly packed sticky rice with meat or bean fillings
wrapped in banana leaves, bánh chưng
(rectangular) and bánh giầy (circular) are
symbolically connected with Tết and are
essential in any Tết celebration. Preparation is
time-consuming, and can take days to cook. The story
of their origins and their connection with Tết
is often recounted to children while cooking them
overnight.
Hạt Dưa: roasted watermelon seeds, also
eaten during Tết
Củ Kiệu: pickled vegetables
Mứt, including mứt dừa, which is
sweetened coconut: These dried candied fruits are
rarely eaten at any time besides Tết.
Cầu Dừa Đủ Xoài - In southern
Vietnam, popular fruits used for offering at the
family altar are the custard-apple/sugar-apple/soursop
(mãng cầu), coconut (dừa), papaya (đu
đủ), and mango (xoài), since they sound
like ”cầu vừa đủ xài” ([we]
pray for enough [money] to spend) in the southern
dialect of Vietnamese.
Making bánh chưng
Calendar differences
The Chinese calendar is based on astronomical
observations and therefore dependent on what is
considered the local standard time. North Vietnam
switched from UTC+8 to UTC+7 on August 8, 1967, with
South Vietnam doing likewise in 1975 at the end of the
Vietnam War. As a result of the shift, North and South
Vietnam celebrated Tết 1968 on different days
[1]. The moving backwards of one hour had a similar
effect to the 1929 Beijing time change and effect of
this change was also seen with the Winter Solstice of
1984. On Hanoi time the solstice fell on 21 December,
though on Beijing time the solstice fell on the 22
December.
As the 11th month of the Chinese calendar must contain
the Winter Solstice, it is not the month from November
23, 1984 to December 21, 1984 as per the Vietnamese
calendar, but rather the one from December 22, 1984 to
January 20, 1985. The effect of this is that the
Vietnamese New Year would fall on January 21, 1985,
whilst the Chinese New Year would fall on February 20,
1985. The two calendars agree again after a leap month
lasting from March 21 to April 19 is inserted into the
Vietnamese calendar.
From 1975 to 2100, there are only four occurrences
where the Lunar New Year begins at different dates in
Vietnam and in China, which are:
Year Vietnamese New Year date Chinese New Year date
1985 21 January 20 February
2007 17 February 18 February
2030 2 February 3 February
2053 18 February 19 February
