One of Your National Festivals

One of your national festivals.

I feel very excited. Our Tet is coming; it’s our New Year celebration - the most important celebration for Vietnamese.

• Time: begin between January twenty-first and February nineteenth. The exact date changes from year to year.

 Tet lasts ten days and the first three days are the most important. People don’t have to go to work at Tet.

• Meaning: Tet marks the beginning of spring and it’s time for family gatherings.
• Preparations:

• Clean the house and decorate the house: People make their homes attractive by decorating them with flowers and plants; hanging brightly-colored decorations
• Buy peach blossoms and apricot blossoms or kumquat trees
• Cook special foods

Give examples: What are you doing to prepare for Tet?

• Activities on New Year’s Eve:

• Gather together and wait for the New Year to come, have parties
• Exchange good wishes
• Go to the pagoda to pray for a happy new year for themselves and their family.
• People in big cities often go to the park or square to see dragon dances/ fireworks

• Activities on New Year’s Day:

People often try to be nice and polite to each other.

They visit their relatives or friends and exchange New Year’s wishes

     Children get lucky money from parents and relatives…

• Foods and clothes:

• Eat banh chung and banh tet
• Put on best clothes or traditional clothes

• Customs:

• It is a custom for all members of a Vietnamese family to be present at home on the Eve of the New Year for the family gathering. → show the unity of the family for the coming new year
• What people do during the first days will influence the whole year → they make every effort to avoid arguments and smile as much as possible.
• First-footer: the first person through the door on New Year’s Day can bring either good or bad luck.
• On the first day of the new year, no one is allowed to sweep the floor. They believe that sweeping the floor will drive away all the good luck that the New Year can bring.