seen on the scene
Vietnamese New Year Celebration
Tet Nguyen Dan or Tet is the most important and popular holiday and fes-
tival in Vietnam. It is the Vietnamese New Year marking the arrival of spring
based on the Lunar calendar, a lunisolar calendar. The name Tet Nguyen Dan
is Sino-Vietnamese for Feast of the very First Morning.
Tet takes place from the first day of the first month of the Lunar calendar
(around late January or early February) until at least the third day. Many
Vietnamese prepare for Tet by cooking special holiday foods and cleaning
their house. There are a lot of customs practiced during Tet such as visiting a
person’s house on the first day of the new year (xông nhà), ancestral worship,
wishing New Year’s greetings, giving lucky money to children and elderly
people and opening a shop.
Tet is also an occasion for pilgrims and family reunions. During Tet, Vietnam-
ese visits their relatives and temples, forgetting the troubles of the past year
and hoping for a better upcoming year. They consider Tet to be the first day
of spring and the festival is often called Hội xuân (spring festival).
Like other Asian countries, Vietnamese believe that the color of red and yel-
low will bring good fortune, which may explain why these colors can be seen
everywhere in Lunar New Year. People consider what they do on the dawn
of Tet will determine their fate for the whole year, hence people always smile
and behave as nice as they can in the hope for a better year.
16 iF Magazine | March 2018