Vietnamese New Year

The Vietnamese New Year is also called the Tet. It is the most important traditional festival during Lunar New Year (usually around late January to early February), and people would celebrate it with different kinds of customs, such as ancestor worship, making special New Year food and writing couplet as well as other traditional activities.And people would go to visit friends or relatives' houses on the first day of Tet.

Making Banh Chung Banh Chung is one of the special traditional foods that people would make during the Vietnamese New Year. It is usually made of sticky rice, along with pork meat and green bean, all wrapped in the shape of perfect square with a leaf of a certain local plant called Dong. And then Vietnamese would place the Banh Chung and other foods on the ancestors' altars (ancestor worship) till cook them on one or two days before the New Year.

Setting up New Year trees At the end of the preparation for the Tet, a piece of bare bamboo (4-5 meters long) will be set up, with a little bunch of leaves on the tip, and a basket holding some fish and bells made of baked clay, acting as the marks that lead the ancestors' spirits their way home to reunion with the living.

Couplet It's an indispensable tradition that every family would put up a couplet on the two sides of the main entrance door. The sentences are usually written in two parts. Words of one part must have the opposite meaning to the other part and obey some specific matching rules, which create an easy-pronounced effect. And you can find these traditional couplets written on red paper and being sold on both sides of the street, forming a happy atmosphere.

Setting up New Year trees At the end of the preparation for the Tet, a piece of bare bamboo (4-5 meters long) will be set up, with a little bunch of leaves on the tip, and a basket holding some fish and bells made of baked clay, acting as the marks that lead the ancestors' spirits their way home to reunion with the living

Couplet It's an indispensable tradition that every family would put up a couplet on the two sides of the main entrance door. The sentences are usually written in two parts. Words of one part must have the opposite meaning to the other part and obey some specific matching rules, which create an easy-pronounced effect. And you can find these traditional couplets written on red paper and being sold on both sides of the street, forming a happy atmosphere.

- Family customs and traditions: (Phong tục và truyền thống gia đình:)

+ have dinner together (ăn tối cùng nhau)

+ go to the cinema at weekends (đi xem phim vào cuối tuần)

+ visit relatives at weekends (tới thăm họ hàng vào cuối tuần)

+ celebrate birthdays of family members (tổ chức sinh nhật cho các thành viên trong gia đình)

- Social customs and traditions: (Phong tục và truyền thống xã hội:)

+ have fireworks on New Year's Eve (bắn pháo hoa vào đêm giao thừa)

+ decorate the house for Tet (trang trí nhà cửa đón Tết)

+ bring presents when visiting someone's house (mang theo quà khi đến thăm nhà ai đó)