Vietnam is one of the few countries in the world that use the lunar calendar and one of the few countries where the Lunar New Year is celebrated nationwide.
The Lunar New Year is the biggest and most lively traditional festival of Vietnamese folklore. Vietnamese people regard the Lunar New Year as a day to celebrate the old and welcome the new, and usually start to do the New Year's shopping from the middle of December on the lunar calendar, while flowers, rice dumplings, spring scrolls and firecrackers are probably the most indispensable things for the Lunar New Year in Vietnam.
★Lunar New Year activities
Flower market is one of the important activities of Lunar New Year in Vietnam. In Hanoi, for example, the flower market starts to bustle about 10 days before the Lunar New Year. Vietnamese people's favorite annual flowers include gladiolus, dahlia, kumquat and peach blossom. In addition to flowers and bonsai, the market also sells balloons, lanterns, toys, New Year's paintings, spring scrolls and calendars, which decorate several streets connected with each other in a colorful and joyful way.
★Features of the Lunar New Year
◇Posting Spring Festival Couplets and Fortune Characters
Vietnamese people also have the habit of posting Spring Festival couplets during the Lunar New Year. In the past, spring scrolls were written in Chinese characters, but after the romanization of the characters, most of the spring scrolls are now written in pinyin, and each pinyin character is a square, which creates its own style.
Also, Vietnamese people love to put up the words "Blessing" and "Hei Hei", images of the stars of fortune, wealth and longevity, as well as traditional New Year's paintings at home to express their good wishes and aspirations for the New Year.
◇New Year's Cake
New Year's Cake is a must for local Chinese during the Lunar New Year, and Vietnamese people are no exception, with the most national characteristics being rice dumplings and glutinous rice cakes. The practice of rice dumplings is the same as the rice dumplings we eat, but the Vietnamese rice dumplings are square and much larger, usually made of 200 grams of glutinous rice, the center of the package with 200 grams of pork and 150 grams of green bean paste, wrapped in banana leaves. Legend has it that the rice dumplings symbolize the earth, with the green color showing vitality, and the pork and mung bean paste representing the birds and animals that flourish in the grass and trees.
◇Firecrackers
Vietnamese used to set off firecrackers during the Lunar New Year, but since 1995, the Vietnamese government has banned the setting off of fireworks during the Lunar New Year.
◇New Year's Eve
The Chinese have a custom of observing the New Year's Eve, and so do the Vietnamese. On New Year's Eve, people put on their festive attire and flock to the streets in unison, with young women wearing Vietnamese cheongsams. The festive atmosphere culminates at zero hour when the national leader's Lunar New Year speech is broadcast on the radio. People then pick a branch to take home. This custom is called "picking green". In Vietnamese, the words "green" and "loc" have the same sound. "Picking the green" means "picking the Loc", which means bringing home good luck.
◇The first guest brings good luck on Tet
Vietnamese people usually take a few days off for Tet holiday, and it is also customary to pay New Year's greetings to friends and relatives. The earliest visitor to the house is especially valued and is said to bring good luck to the host. The Vietnamese call this "Chon Ka" or "Chon Di", which is close in meaning to "Chon Hai". Therefore, Vietnamese people usually invite their closest and most respected friends as the first guests of the Lunar New Year.
◇Recreational activities
In addition to visits between friends and relatives, during the Lunar New Year, various kinds of recreational activities are held on the streets, parks and public **** entertainment venues for several days in Vietnam, including performances of traditional Vietnamese drama, songs and dances, acrobatics, martial arts, wrestling, lion dances, as well as folkloric activities, such as swinging, playing chess, cockfighting, and birdfighting, which immerses the whole of the country in a festive atmosphere.
★Vietnamese New Year customs
The Lunar New Year in Vietnam begins on the 23rd day of the Lunar New Year, and the atmosphere of the New Year continues throughout the month of January, which, according to Vietnamese folklore, is the month of "eating, drinking and having fun". According to Vietnamese folklore, on the 23rd day of the Lunar New Year, all the gods on earth go back to heaven to report on the year's situation, and Mr. Zao, who is in charge of a family's life, also goes up to heaven to report on the year's situation of the family. Once Master Zaowang is gone, there is no god left to watch over the family, so this is the time to clean up and remodel some of the places in the house that are afraid to be moved in order to prepare for the New Year. This day is also known as the Day of the New Year. This is apparently the same origin as the Chinese folklore about Lord Zao. In order to send Master Zao on his way properly, so that he will have a high hand when he reports back, people go and release carp - Master Zao's mount.
After the removal, it is time to prepare the New Year's goods. The traditional contents of the New Year's goods can be seen in the folk song "Fat meat pickled buckwheat red couplets, tomato sticks cannonballs green rice dumplings". Nowadays, life is better, fat meat is not necessarily necessary, but buy a lot of meat to prepare for the New Year is still necessary. No matter how good life is, the pickled buckwheat is still on people's tables and has become a traditional symbol of the New Year. Although couplets are still bought, they are not as popular because the Chinese characters no longer have the status of an official script. The tomato pole is something that can't be missing as it absolves one of the calamities. As for setting off firecrackers, in 1995, the Vietnamese government abolished this traditional way of celebrating the New Year with a decree. In order to preserve the New Year's Eve atmosphere, the Vietnamese government organizes fireworks in the central squares of large and medium-sized cities every New Year's Eve. Nian Dumplings, on the other hand, are used to offer sacrifices to ancestors. Vietnamese rice dumplings are square, with one having about 1 kilogram, taking the meaning of the circle of heaven and earth.
There are three decorations that are indispensable during the Lunar New Year in the homes of the Vietnamese (Kinh) people: peach blossoms, kumquat bonsai and the "five-fruit bowl".
The peach blossom is a symbol of good luck and protection from evil in the minds of Vietnamese. Kumquat is taken to mean good luck. South of central Vietnam, there are no peach blossoms due to the climate, and yellow plum blossoms are usually used instead. As a decoration, it is not only found at home and in stores, but even placed in all organizations. At the same time, all organizations hang banners to welcome the New Year at the entrance, and temples and other places are no exception, as temples are the main place for Vietnamese people to celebrate the New Year. Literary units also organize performances on the streets on the evening of New Year's Eve to create a New Year's Eve atmosphere. As a legal holiday, Vietnamese Lunar New Year is celebrated with a 3-day vacation. Families place national flags in their homes, and building occupants place them outside their windows, creating a unique landscape.
The "Five Fruit Pots" are used to make offerings to ancestors. There are five kinds of fen lychee, coconut, banyan fruit, mango, etc. In Vietnamese, fen lychee sounds the same as "seek", coconut is the same as "Yu", banyan fruit is the same as "fill", mango is the same as "make", which is the same as "make", which is the same as "make", which is the same as "make". In the Chinese language, fen lychee sounds the same as "seek", coconut is the same as "yu", water banyan fruit is the same as "full" and mango is the same as "make", which means that we wish to have more money in every year, to be well-fed, and to have money to make endless.
Vietnamese people travel thousands of kilometers to their homes for the New Year's Eve dinner and the New Year's Eve celebration, where the whole family sits together. When the old year is about to end and the new year is approaching, incense is set up to welcome the new year, which is called "Nien Phat". On New Year's Eve, Vietnamese people also have the custom of "asking for money". There are two kinds of custom: one is called "Cai Loc", usually when returning from the temple to pay homage to their ancestors, they pick a branch with green leaves to take home, which means to collect the blessings given by the gods of heaven and earth. The branch is then placed in front of the shrine at home until the leaves are withered. Another way is to bring back some fruits, also called "Lu", which can be distributed to friends and relatives as a way of spreading good fortune.
On the morning of the first day of the first day, every family should worship ancestors, but also to worship the land, Zaojun, the hundred arts master, offerings are not limited to how much, but generally have zongzi, braised fish, packaged meat ball, hot meat, pickled buckwheat, beef and so on. Offerings to worship finished, children to the elderly at home to pay homage to the New Year, the adults will give them New Year's money. For breakfast, families eat glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in reed leaves. A special feature is the "New Year's celebration". Vietnamese people attach great importance to the first person who comes to their house on the first day of the Lunar New Year. This person is called the "New Year's greeting" person. Many families ask a loyal, kind and lucky person to come to the house before the New Year to wish them good luck and good fortune in the New Year.
The first day of the Lunar New Year in Vietnam is also marked by many fascinating activities: singing and dancing, theater performances, dragon and lion dances, and the most distinctive activity is playing human chess. A Chinese chess board is drawn on the ground, and people holding wooden boards (with rooks, knights, cannons, etc. engraved on the boards to correspond to the chess pieces) sit in the field as the chess pieces. When playing the game, the players are deployed and the bystanders are urged to move with the sound of drums, which is quite similar to the sands of jingo and iron horses and has a strong sense of realism, and is very popular among the Vietnamese people.
Taboos on the first day of the year is also quite a lot, such as: can not quarrel, can not speak foul language, can not borrow things, can not collect debts; and can not do farm work, otherwise it will alarm the land god, the crops will suffer; the first day of the year can not be swept, even if swept the ground can not be dumped garbage, we must wait for three days after the earth can be poured. On the second and third days, men who have established a family, if their parents are alive, must send New Year's greetings and gifts to their parents; if their parents have died, they should bring offerings to their eldest brother's house to pay homage to their parents' spirits. On the fourth day of the first month, people burn paper money and paper clothes to offer and send off their ancestors. On this day, families get together and have another reunion meal. During the first month of the lunar calendar, Vietnamese people often engage in many activities, collectively known as "Tet" (spring viewing). There are daffodils, lanterns, opera, folk songs, temple worship and visits to places of interest.
Vietnam's ethnic minorities have their own specialties for the festival. For example, on New Year's Eve, the Hmong used to fire shotguns instead of firecrackers, burn incense and offer sacrifices at the stream before fetching water to cook New Year's Eve rice; they had to offer sacrifices to their ancestors before eating New Year's Eve rice, and couldn't drink soup after the meal, believing that the soup would cause the crops to be submerged; during the Lunar New Year period, the people of the whole village or a few villages would gather to hold a song contest, folk dance, and embroidery ball tossing.