Chúc Mừng Năm Mới!
Happy New Year from Vietnam!
Vietnamese New Year, or Tet, falls on the last day of the lunar year – this year, that’s 14th February. In Vietnam, new year isn’t just new year. It’s your birthday (everyone gets a year older), Christmas (a family occasion when gifts and lucky money are given) and new year (this one being the Year of the Tiger).
This is our second experience of Tet, so we were used to the “Tet trees” and “Tet branches” (every household gets a kumquat tree and/or peach blossom branch to decorate their house). Before Tet, everyone burns money (usually fake dollars) for luck and the shops become frantic (there is a saying that you don’t celebrate Tet, you eat it – like Christmas, really). The first day is a family day, the next few days, everyone gets on the family motorbike and visits friends. The celebrations go on for a week after, and the preparations start months before. After Tet, you have to burn your Tet decorations. We also noticed this year that cradled on the motorbike bearing its siblings and parents the baby is dressed in a tiger baby-grow.
And, seeing as we have more than a week off from work, we’re going to celebrate too. If only they did tiger baby-grows in my size.
