Lunar New Year in Vietnam - starting on Feb 14

At least one more month to the Lunar New year coming, but the atmosphere is now exciting and warming in HCMC.

Tet - Vietnamese and Chinese Lunar New Year, is the most important Festival of Vietnamese people. This scared Festival sometime between late January or early February (depend on Lunar Calendar) and Tet has become so familiar to the Vietnamese that when Spring arrives, the Vietnamese, wherever they may be, are all thrilled and excited with the advent of Tet, and they feel an immense nostalgia, wishing to come back to their homeland for a family reunion and a taste of the particular flavors of the Vietnamese festivities.

In 2010, “Tet” will be on February 14. It will be the year of the Tiger. The national holiday lasts for three days. However, in practice it can be longer, as many celebrations occur before this date in the south of Viet Nam and after this date in the north of Viet Nam.

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During the week before Tet, some families visit the graves of parents and grandparents. Fresh earth is placed on top, weeds removed from around it and incense is burnt to invoke the souls of the dead from the other world to return to visit the family home.

The Kitchen God (Ong Tao or Mandarin Tao) is also called the Hearth God, the Stove God or the Household God. This god, who was privy to the family's most private business and intimate secrets for the ending year, returns to Heaven to make his report to the Jade Emperor. This report includes the year's activities of the household in which he has lived. On the 23rd day of the 12th month, a farewell and thank you dinner is given to the Kitchen God by the household. The Kitchen God will need a week for his mission to Heaven. Like Santa Claus, the Kitchen God is loved and respected. Both have the capacity to bring fortune and happiness into the home depending on the previous year's behavior. Although beliefs about the Kitchen God have changed over the years, he remains an important figure in the rich texture of Vietnamese New Year.

Traditional foods of Tet include, clockwise from top:

·        pork stew with hard-boiled eggs; bitter melon stuffed

·        with ground pork and fish, cooked in pork broth;

·        glutinous rice cake stuffed pork and “mung” beans;

·        Roast pork; and an anchovy-flavored dipping sauce.

Holiday foods -- Cakes made of glutinous rice are essential to Tet:

• Round cakes (this one is topped with a meat patty) represent the universe.
• Square cakes (this one still wrapped in banana leaves) represent Earth.
• The cylindrical cake is stuffed with pork and yellow mung beans.
• Candied fruits and vegetables -- carrots, coconut slices, ginger lotus root and lotus seeds -- are served with tea, as is traditional in China as well.

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Seasonal symbolism -- Certain fruits are valued for their color, scent or because their names have double meanings.

• Sour sop, for example, is called “mang cau”. Cau by itself means 'to pray.'
• Words for mango and papaya can also mean 'plentiful' and 'enough.'
• This basket of fruit is meant as a prayer that the household will have enough in the New Year.
• Roasted watermelon seeds are valued for their red color, considered lucky.

 

 

After the Kitchen God has left, preparations for the New Year festivities begin in earnest. The week before New Year's Eve is a period of Tat Nien. Tat Nien (literally meaning the end or 'to extinguish the year') is the celebration of the last session of a period, such as the last class of school, the last bus home, the last day in the 

office, even the last bath, all with parties and great ceremony. There is a festive holiday atmosphere before New Year's Eve with dragon dances.

 

Sweeping and scrubbing is done in advance as tradition discourages cleaning during the holiday itself. During this time, shops and restaurants close while the cleaning spree proceeds in earnest. On hands and knees, the floors will be scrubbed; bronze will be polished to a brand new finish. Closets will be ransacked for old clothes to be tossed out. Shoppers swarm the streets at temporary Tet stalls that have sprung up, lit with tiny gaily-flashing lights. Everything needed for the celebration from food to decorations is at hand and in abundance at these Tet markets.

Two items required for the proper enjoyment of Tet are flowering branches and the kumquat bush. For the sale of these and other flowers and plants, a lively flower market is held in the center of the ancient quarter of Hanoi. on Hang Luoc Street. A massive flower market was organized on Nguyen Hue Street in Ho Chi Minh City and attracts crowds who walk up and down the street admiring the flowers, meeting old friends and making new ones. However, this was moved out of the center in 1996. Throughout the country on bicycles of roving vendors, flowers create great splashes of color. In the south, the bright golden yellow branches of the mai apricot are seen everywhere. In the north, the soft rose-colored “dao” peach flowers decorate homes and offices. A truck driver will adorn his truck with a “dao” branch to cheer him on a long-distance run.

 

In recent times, a new tradition has evolved to celebrate the important evening of the New Year. Those who are not at home praying at this momentous time may be socializing with friends. In the cities, there will be community fireworks displays that will draw the young from their homes into the square or park. Although firecrackers are now illegal in Vietnam, some kind of loud noises will be made. It can be the banging of cans, the use of electronic popping firecrackers or human voices whooping it up. People will break off branches and twigs that contain newly sprouted leaves to bring a sense of freshness and vitality into their home. This follows a Buddhist tradition of bringing fresh new leaves and "fortune bearing buds" into the home from the pagoda.