Vietnamese new year
Lunar New Year ( Tet) is a biggest traditional festival in Vietnam . Time : 1st to 3rd on the first month ( Lunar calendar). On the occasion of Tet, families usually get together to visit with relatives and friends to share and express their best wishes for the new year.The days nearly before New Year , they send greeting cards to relatives and friends
Tet and indispensable features :
Homage to Kitchen God Tao
Tet rites really begin a week before New Year'Day. On the 23rd day of the 12th Lunar month, a ceremony is held at home in honor of the Tao Quan( Gods of the Hearth).
Nguyen dan, the Vietnamese New Year is the time to pay homage to the kitchen God Tao. The custom associated with the kitchen God is observed a week before the New Year. Vietnamese believed that there are three gods represented by the three legs of the cooking equipments in the kitchen. The middle God is a woman and the other two are her husbands. In earlier times, it was customary to provide a carp to the gods on which they can travel. The carp symbolizes the second last stage of the process by which animals were transformed into dragons. Keeping the old custom alive, people buy the carp from the market and place in the bucket of water and placed on the altar of the house which was later set free.
Vietnamese New Year Food
Vietnamese New Year food includes a special rice pudding called banh Chung or banh Tet prepared beforehand. The pudding contains mung beans and pork. Other New Year delicacies include preserved sweets, chicken, fish, oranges, beef, grapefruits, coconuts and some seasonal fruits.
New Year going out, gathering luck and visit:
The time of the Xuat Hanh ( Going Out Ceremony), which usually takes place on the night of the New Year'Day or the second day of the year, is carefully chosen at the propitious hour in accordance with one 's birth date. Young men and women go to a nearly park or forest or pagoda to " collect luck" ( Hai Loc) , a branch of young leaves which symbolizes hope and good fortune.
Another dispensable feature is Xong Dat. The first visitor to the home on Tet morning is very important. Ideally, that person should be a happy, married and sucessful man, a man of virtue.
A tray of five kinds of fruits:
According to the ancient Oriental people, the universe was taken its shape by five elements_ called Ngu Hanh : metal, wood, water, five and earth.Ideology as well as the image of Ngu Hanh entered into the meterial and spiritual life of the Oriental peoples with many features. The Vietnamese people's custom of worshipping the Tet fruit tray is one of these features.
The fruit tray in the North is , as a whole, smaller than that in the South. It must have three kinds of fruits: banana, grape fruit, mandarine ( or orange) while a pair of water melons, and four kinds of fruits: custard apple, coconut, papaya, mango cannot be misssing on the fruit tray in the South. For Southerners, this fruit tray means the popular wish for a comfortable life _ the commonest demand of every Southerner in the new year.
With its multicolor, original shape and profound meaning the fruit tray makes the Tet livelier and more sacred. Morever, it shows the aesthetic, religions, philosophical meaning as well as optimistic expectation which every family brings to start a new year.
Mung Tuoi:
This is a custom of Vietnamese to congratulate someoneon advancing in New Year: health, lucky, learn well , work well, grow up fast, happy .. That is a present or money, but money is usual , that s why it is called Tien Mung Tuoi ( Mung Tuoi money). Usuall, Tien Mung Tuoi is given to children . Any adults people come to relationship'house or friends'house on Tet should Mung Tuoi children there.
To understand much more and detail about Vietnamese Tet ( New Year), you can view this link :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E1%BA%BFt
This year Tet will be started from January 25th to 31th in Sun Calendar ( international Calendar)