Tết

For the river in France, see Têt River.

Tết Nguyên Đán pronunciation^ⓘ, 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. The name Tết Nguyên Đán is Sino-Vietnamese for Feast of the First Morning, derived from the Hán nôm characters 節元旦. In modern Chinese, the characters for Nguyên Ðán (元旦) have evolved to refer to New Year in the Gregorian calendar, that is, January 1.^[1]

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. Tết shares 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 hoping for a better upcoming year. Tết traditionally marks the coming of Spring, so Spring (Xuân) 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.

Customs

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

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 familys 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), who report to the Jade Emperor about the events in that house over the past year, return to heaven on the 23^rd day of the last month of the Chinese calendar. 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 about the family.^{[citation needed]}

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

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 (red envelopes containing money) 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 determines their fortune 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, a person with a happy demeanor or who had experienced good 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 to prevent anyone else entering the house first who might potentially bring any unfortunate events in the new year to 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

Traditionally, each family displays a New Year Tree called cây nêu, consisting of a bamboo pole 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.

At Tết every house is usually decorated by "hoa mai"- Ochnaceae (in the middle and southern parts of Vietnam) or "hoa đào"- Prunus persica (in the northern part of Vietnam) or "hoa ban" (in the mountain areas).

In some cities, 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.

Vietnamese people also decorate their homes with bonsai and flower tree such as hoa cúc, vạn thọ meaning great age, mào gà in Southern Vietnam and thủy tiên, hoa bướm in Northern Vietnam and other contries.

They also hang up Dong Ho Painting and thư pháp (calligraphy picture).

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 (May 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 (恭喜发财) (Congratulations and be prosperous)
Tiền vô như nước (May money flow in like water): used informally

Forbiddance Custom

These forbiddance customs are not based on any scientific foundations, but they are the traditions passing from generation to generation and have become standard. With the opinion that the beginning impacts on the process and the end, Vietnamese people avoid doing bad things and try to do good things during Tết holiday.

Do

- Shoud give people lucky presents to enhance the relationship between you and others: new clothes, Prunus persica branch (for expelling the evils), cocks (wish for good manner), new rice (wish for well-fed), rice wine in gourd (wish for rich and comfortable life), bánh chưng and bánh dày which symbolize sky and earth (for worship the ancestors), red things (red symbolize happiness, luckiness, advantages) like water melon, dog (the bark "bow-wow"- gâu gâu like the pronunciation of the word giàu- richness in Vietnamese language), medicated oil (dầu in Vietnamese pronunciated like giàu- richness).

- Should give present lucky Dong Ho Painting such as: "Gà đàn" (wish for having many children), "Vinh hoa", but should's give present unlucky Dong Ho Painting like "Đánh ghen" related to legal proceedings.

- Should buy a lot of water on Tết holiday because people wish money flow in stream like water currents (proverb: "Tiền vô như nước").

- Should sprinkle lime powder around the house to expel evil.

- Should return all things you borrow, pay your debt before Tết.

- Should come back home before New Year's Eve if you don't want to be in diffcult working.

Do not

- Shouldn't say or do bad things during Tết.

- Shouldn't hurt or kill animals or plants but should set free them. That reason origins from Buddhism's causality.

- Shouldn't sweep the house and empty out the rubbish if people don't want to lose luckiness and benefit going away with the rubbish. Shouldn't let the broom in confusion if people don't want to be stolen.

- Shouldn't give these presents to others: clock or watch (if someone receive them, they think that their time're going to pass), cat (mèo in Vietnamese language pronunciated like nghèo- poverty), drug (making receivers think about illness), cuttle fish (its ink is black- an unlucky colour) (and also ink for writing), scissors or knife (they bring incompatibleness).

- Shouldn't have duck meat because it brings unluckiness.

- Shouldn't have shrimp because they're afraid that they would move back like shrimp.

- Shouldn't buy or wear white clothes because white is the colour of funeral.

- Shouldn't let the rice-hulling mill empty because it sympolize fail crops. Should put some rice into.

- Shouldn't refuse all things other people give or wish you during Tết.

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 vegetarian since it is believed to be bad luck to eat meat on that day. These foods 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 offerings at the family altar in fruit arranging art 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.

Games

People're delighted to enjoy exciting games during Tết: đánh đu, Chinese chess, ném còn, chọi trâu, đá gà, etc...They also participate in some competitions presenting their knowledge, strength and aestheticism such as: bird competition and ngâm thơ competition.

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 ^[2]. The moving backwards of one hour had a similar effect to the 1929 Beijing time change and the 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 22 December.

As the 11^th 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, whereas the Chinese New Year would fall on February 20,1985. The two calendars agreed again after a leap month lasting from March 21 to April 19 was 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

In the Vietnamese system, the "cat" replaces the "rabbit" in the Chinese system. Thus, a child born in the Chinese year of the rabbit was also born in the Vietnamese year of the cat (mèo/mão). The Vietnamese system uses the same animals as the Chinese system for the remaining 11 years, though the "ox" or "cow" of the Chinese system is usually considered to be a water buffalo (sửu/trâu) in the Vietnamese system.

References

^ zh:元旦
^ Mathematics of the Chinese calendar, pp. 29-30

External links

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[1] zh:元旦

[2] Mathematics of the Chinese calendar, pp. 29-30

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