Chúc mừng năm mới!

Happy New Year!!!! We celebrated Tet this year at a Chinese restaurant....one, because it is MUCH cheaper than the Vietnamese restaurant in town and two, because we have no dining room table (long story but we sold ours and our new one hasn't arrived yet).

Here are a few interesting facts about Tet:)

Tết Nguyên Đán pronunciation (help·info), 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 based on the Lunar calendar, a lunisolar calendar. The name Tết Nguyên Đán is Sino-Vietnamese for Feast of the First Morning, derived from the Hán nôm characters 節元旦.

Tết is celebrated on the same day as Chinese New Year though exceptions arise due to the one-hour time difference between Hanoi and Beijing. It takes place from the first day of the first month of the Lunar calendar (around late January or early February) until at least the third day. Tết shares many of the same customs of its Chinese counterpart. Many Vietnamese prepare for Tết by cooking special holiday foods and cleaning the house. There are a lot of customs practiced during Tết, like visiting a person's house on the first day of the new year (xông nhà), ancestral worshipping, wishing New Year's greetings, giving lucky money to children and elderly people, and opening a shop.

Tết is also an occasion for pilgrims and family reunions. During Tết, Vietnamese visit their relatives and temples, forgetting about the troubles of the past year and hoping for a better upcoming year. They consider Tết to be the first day of spring and the festival is often called Hội xuân (spring festival)

Dos

• One should give people lucky presents to enhance the relationship between themselves and others: new clothes, peach branches (for expelling evil), cocks (wishing for good manners), new rice (wishing for being well-fed), rice wine in a gourd (wishing for a rich and comfortable life), bánh chưng (or bánh tét) and bánh dày which symbolize sky and earth (for worshipping the ancestors), red things (red symbolizes happiness, luckiness, advantages) like watermelon, dogs (the bark – gâu gâu – sounds like the word giàu - richness in Vietnamese language), medicated oil (dầu in Vietnamese, also sounds similar to giàu).
• One should give lucky Dong Ho Paintings such as: "Gà đàn" (wishing for having many children), or "Vinh hoa", but should not give unlucky Dong Ho paintings like "Đánh ghen" related to legal proceedings.
• One should buy a lot of water for Tết, because people wish for money to flow like water currents in a stream (proverb: "Tiền vô như nước").
• One should sprinkle lime powder around the house to expel evil.
• One should return all things borrowed, and pay debts before Tết.
• Go gambling after you are done with the festivities.

Don'ts

• One shouldn't say or do bad things during Tết.
• One shouldn't hurt or kill animals or plants but should set them free. The reason for this originates from Buddhism's causality.
• One shouldn't sweep the house or empty out the rubbish to avoid luck and benefits going with it, especially on the first day of the new year. One shouldn't let the broom in confusion if people don't want it to be stolen.
• One shouldn't give these presents to others: clock or watch (the recipient's time is going to pass), cats (mèo in Vietnamese language pronounced like nghèo, poverty), medicine (the receiver will get ill), cuttle fish (its ink is black, an unlucky colour), writing ink (for the same reason), scissors or knives (they bring incompatibility).
• One shouldn't have duck meat because it brings unluckiness.
• One shouldn't have shrimp in case one would move backwards like shrimp, in other words, one would not succeed.
• One shouldn't buy or wear white clothes because white is the colour of funerals in Vietnam.
• One shouldn't let the rice-hulling mill go empty because it symbolizes failed crops.
• One shouldn't refuse anything others give or wish you during Tết.