CLUB MASTER HOANG: POST 335 17FEB2018 VIETNAMESE NEW YEAR TET

Saturday, February 17, 2018

POST 335 17FEB2018 VIETNAMESE NEW YEAR TET - CALLIGRAPHY

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POST 334 Feb.17, 2018

TET, Vietnamese New Year

VIETNAMESE NEW YEAR ‘TET’ CELEBRATION

For this year the Vietnamese TET falls on 16, 17 and 18 February 2018

Tết or Vietnamese New Year, is the most important celebration in Vietnamese culture. During the Tết Vietnamese people usually return to their families. Some return to worship at the family altar or visit the graves of their ancestors in their homeland. They also clean the graves of their family as a sign of respect. Many customs are practiced during the Tết, such as visiting a person's house on the first day of the new year (xông nhà), ancestor worship, wishing New Year's greetings, giving lucky money to children and elderly people. Tết is also an occasion for pilgrims and family reunions. They start forgetting about the troubles of the past year and hope for a better upcoming year. They consider Tết to be the first day of spring.

The first day of Tết is reserved for the nuclear family. Children receive a red envelope containing money from their elders. This tradition is called mừng tuổi (happy new age) in the north and lì xì in the south. Usually, children wear their new clothes and give their elders the traditional Tết greetings before receiving the money. Since the Vietnamese believe that the first visitor a family receives in the year determines their fortune for the entire year, people never enter any house on the first day without being invited first.
During subsequent days, people visit relatives and friends. Traditionally but not strictly, the second day of Tết is usually reserved for friends, while the third day is for teachers, who command respect in Vietnam. Local Buddhist temples are popular spots as people like to give donations and to get their fortunes told during the Tết. Prosperous families can pay for dragon dancers to perform at their house. Traditionally, in the county side, each family displays cây nêu, an artificial New Year tree consisting of a bamboo pole 5 to 6 m long. The top end is usually decorated with many objects, depending on the locality, including good luck charms, origami fish, cactus branches, etc. The fruit basket decoration made on the ancestor altar for Tết consists of five kind of different fruits (bananas, oranges, tangerines, a pomelo, and a pineapple)
At Tết, every house is usually decorated by Yellow Apricot blossoms (hoa mai) in the central and southern parts of Vietnam; or peach blossoms (hoa đào) in the northern part of Vietnam. They also hung up popular wood print, the Dong Ho paintings and thư pháp calligraphy pictures. On the Tet educated people should make a first writing of the year, it could be some phrases or a poem.