How Vietnamese celebrate our own New Year’s Eve

     The kind of calendar that we use today is based on sun period, but do you know that there is another calendar is based on moon period? Yes, this calendar is Lunal calendar. Thanks Lular calendar, we have Lunar new year which Vietnamese us call “Tet”. Today is first of December as Lunar calendar, just one month to Lunar new year. “Tet” is coming!

     As Christmas, Tet is one of the most important occasion with Vietnamese, this is family reunion time, every family members stay together, make “chung cake”. This is a really good way to enhance family relationship.

     The main dishes for this holiday contain “chung cake”, red sticky rice, boiled chicken, 8 types of stir fried veggies, 4 type of soups, spring roll, etc. It’s up to each family and tradition. This is a chance for woman in family show their cooking skills to guests. All houses are decorated with beautiful balloons, sometimes, they also use pompons, but the unique feature of Tet holiday is the tree. Peach blossoms aka “Dao”, kumquat trees aka “Quat” will be decorated with string lights aka Christmas lights and adorable ornaments.

   

  Everybody wears colorful clothes, visit their relatives and congrats them to have a happy year. Having lunch or dinner together, chatting about life and their wishes for new year, sometimes telling some jokes are the way we connect to the others.

     From the past, we used to have cracker for the first day of new year, but nowadays, to protect people, cracker was banned. On the other hand, we still keep up almost the traditions from our ancestors. Lucky money aka “li xi” is amount of money that adult people give to children in red envelopes with the hope that children will study well and be healthy for whole year. If you want to learn more our culture. Let's come and explore with us!