There are few day left before the Tet holiday of Vietnam in 2012. For a nation of farmers attached to the land for millennia, such as Vietnam, Tet holiday has always been a festival marking the communion of man with nature.
In the flow of seasons it is a pause during which both the field and the tiller enjoy some rest after twelve months of labor. In this period of universal renewal the Vietnamese man feels surging within himself a fountain of youth. That feeling explains many fine customs: in the Vietnam lunar new year all action should be pure and beautiful for it may be an omen foretelling events in the twelve months that follow.
For three days in Tet holiday, one takes extra care not to show anger and not to be rude to people. The most nagging mother-in-law will make peace with her daughter-in-law; a quarreling couple will smile pleasantly at each other; the new world should be the best of worlds. When the Tet holiday ends, people will resume their activities in a new spirit following so-called opening rituals in which the ploughman will open the first furrow, the official applies his seal to the first document, the scholar trace the first character with his pen brush, the trader receives his first customer.
As a rule, all members of the extended family try to spend the holiday (the idiom used is to “eat Tet”) together under the same roof. Children vow to be well-behaved and are often given gifts of cash wrapped in red paper. Several times a day, joss-sticks are lit on the family altar and offerings made of food, fresh water, flowers and betel. Family graves are visited, generally, before the end of the ‘outgoing’ year; fences are mended and the burial mounds tidied up.
The Vietnamese Tet is an occasion for an entire people to share a common ideal of peace, concord and mutual love. I know of no communal celebration with more humanistic character
