It's Tet holidays, and the whole country is swept up in a wave of festivities. To welcome the New Year, everyone looks back to his or her roofs. Housewives prepare traditional dishes, old men paints banners that are strung up for good luck; villages hold religions processions, traditional games and rice-cooking contests. So put on your best clothes, eat a little banh chung and get into the spirit.
Mind you, it could extremely confusing for anyone arriving in Vietnam at Tet (which this year falls on January 21, 22 and 23) who doesn't already know what's going on. The tremendous energy of the last days of the old year suddenly evaporates, the bustling shops are boarded are left wondering what on earth has happened and where everyone has gone. Many expatriates take the opportunity to gain an insight into the character and culture of Vietnam. The Vietnamese look forward to Tet as the most important holiday of the year. After a whole year of hard work, it's the perfect time to relax.
Most of the Tet rituals revolve around maximizing the prospects for a good year ahead. For week beforehand, families prepare classic seasonal dishes, including the essential banh chung (traditional sticky rice cake), clean their house and buy new clothes for their children. Meanwhile the eldest person in the household cleans the ancestral altar and buys votive papers to burn as offerings.
In the first hours of the lunar New Year, after families perform their devotions at the ancestral altar, they choose an auspicious direction in which to set out for the local temple or pagoda. Here they pray for a good year with good business prospects.
On their way back home they choose branches bearing new leaves from a banyan or fig tree and plant them ' these tress are believed to house holy spirits, and the word for leaf bud, loc, is a homonym for good fortune. The fresher the loc, the better chance of good luck. Other families bring home some incense to burn on the ancestral alter accompanied by prayers for a good and prosperous year. A big influence will turn out is the character of the house in the New Year. So before families return home from their local temple, they choose a family member with the most auspicious energy to first 'foot their house on lunar New Year's Day. If nobody in the family is suitable for this important task, they can approach someone else, a friend, and neighbor or work colleague to help. Many people orchestrate this visit very carefully, to ensure the first person to call at the house has the right character for the particular year to come.
New Year means everybody suddenly becomes one year older, an important matter for the life expectancy of the elderly and for young children, who can be expected to fell much more grown up virtually overnight.
Much like New Year resolutions for Westerners, Vietnamese people also have the habit of working out their hopes and wishes foe the coming year weeks before the big day.
Meanwhile, shops specializing in sacred images come into their own at this time of year. The many shops in Hang Ma Street in Hanoi, for instance, the traditional center for votive papers, sacred images and Tet decorations, are ablaze with color.
On offer here are paper lanterns kites for kids of all ages, masks for mid-autumn festivals and decorations for weddings, meetings and other occations, and also before Tet many sizes and kind of bao li xi ' envelopes in which adults give lucky money to children.
Foe li xi or lucky money is another fine old Tet tradition. Mind you, this can become a fairly costly business if you have friends with several children in the family. If you visit a Vietnamese family around Tet, it's probably wise take red li xi envelopes. Generally, lucky money tends to be given to children younger than 15.
Vietnam may be moving rapidly into the modern world, but at the same time it is still a land of custom and tradition ' and Tet is its biggest holiday of the year. Even though times are changing, this Tet will still be a time of great energy, faith and togetherness.
Mind you, it could extremely confusing for anyone arriving in Vietnam at Tet (which this year falls on January 21, 22 and 23) who doesn't already know what's going on. The tremendous energy of the last days of the old year suddenly evaporates, the bustling shops are boarded are left wondering what on earth has happened and where everyone has gone. Many expatriates take the opportunity to gain an insight into the character and culture of Vietnam. The Vietnamese look forward to Tet as the most important holiday of the year. After a whole year of hard work, it's the perfect time to relax.
Most of the Tet rituals revolve around maximizing the prospects for a good year ahead. For week beforehand, families prepare classic seasonal dishes, including the essential banh chung (traditional sticky rice cake), clean their house and buy new clothes for their children. Meanwhile the eldest person in the household cleans the ancestral altar and buys votive papers to burn as offerings.
In the first hours of the lunar New Year, after families perform their devotions at the ancestral altar, they choose an auspicious direction in which to set out for the local temple or pagoda. Here they pray for a good year with good business prospects.
On their way back home they choose branches bearing new leaves from a banyan or fig tree and plant them ' these tress are believed to house holy spirits, and the word for leaf bud, loc, is a homonym for good fortune. The fresher the loc, the better chance of good luck. Other families bring home some incense to burn on the ancestral alter accompanied by prayers for a good and prosperous year. A big influence will turn out is the character of the house in the New Year. So before families return home from their local temple, they choose a family member with the most auspicious energy to first 'foot their house on lunar New Year's Day. If nobody in the family is suitable for this important task, they can approach someone else, a friend, and neighbor or work colleague to help. Many people orchestrate this visit very carefully, to ensure the first person to call at the house has the right character for the particular year to come.
New Year means everybody suddenly becomes one year older, an important matter for the life expectancy of the elderly and for young children, who can be expected to fell much more grown up virtually overnight.
Much like New Year resolutions for Westerners, Vietnamese people also have the habit of working out their hopes and wishes foe the coming year weeks before the big day.
Meanwhile, shops specializing in sacred images come into their own at this time of year. The many shops in Hang Ma Street in Hanoi, for instance, the traditional center for votive papers, sacred images and Tet decorations, are ablaze with color.
On offer here are paper lanterns kites for kids of all ages, masks for mid-autumn festivals and decorations for weddings, meetings and other occations, and also before Tet many sizes and kind of bao li xi ' envelopes in which adults give lucky money to children.
Foe li xi or lucky money is another fine old Tet tradition. Mind you, this can become a fairly costly business if you have friends with several children in the family. If you visit a Vietnamese family around Tet, it's probably wise take red li xi envelopes. Generally, lucky money tends to be given to children younger than 15.
Vietnam may be moving rapidly into the modern world, but at the same time it is still a land of custom and tradition ' and Tet is its biggest holiday of the year. Even though times are changing, this Tet will still be a time of great energy, faith and togetherness.
