Lunar New Year in Vietnam
- Phương Thảo Mạc
- Jan 25, 2022
- 6 min read
As winter breezes grow gentler and the first peach blossom bud was born, something shifts in the air. People hurry to go home after work, more anxious to see familiar faces again. Something is buzzing. The Lunar New Year is coming.
Lunar New Year – or as many Westerners unknowingly call the Chinese New Year – marks the beginning of a new year according to the lunar calendar, which is often used in many Asian countries for religious occasions. It is also the biggest holiday of the year, when people spend weeks, or even months, planning, preparing, and celebrating. For many families, the Lunar New Year might be the only annual occasion where the entire family can gather. It is as important to the Vietnamese people as Christmas to the Catholics.
In Vietnam, the twenty-third of December is often seen as the official mark of the Lunar New Year. According to our belief, on the twenty-third, the three Tao – the guardian deities that reside in the kitchen of each household - ride flying carps to the sky. There they report to Ngoc Hoang – the King of Gods – about all the deeds their assigned families have done in the last year. If they are deemed good, the family will receive many fortunes in the next year. If not, they will eventually pay their price. Ngoc Hoang, thus, is not too dissimilar to the Western Santa Claus. The difference is the judges the adults as well.
The twenty-third of December is thus seen as a big day. Families buy both real and paper fish – the main transportation to heaven – and new attires for the Tao so that they can be ready to meet Ngoc Hoang. The attires are made of Poonah paper – a colourful, thin, paper-like material made from leaves. After the farewell meal for the Tao, the families burn the attires and paper fish to send them to heaven with the guardian deities, then release the real fish to the nearest body of water. My father dumps them right in our giant fish tank, where, a few days after, they mysteriously disappear. I suspect our cat might be the culprit for their disappearance, but I have never caught him in the act.
One week before the Lunar New Year’s Eve, all family members busy themselves with cleaning and decorating. Kids are buzzing with excitement over the long holiday. Ladies stock their kitchens with as many delicacies as they can make or buy since no supermarket or bazaar is open during the first five days of the new year. Meanwhile, men leisurely spend time visiting as many New Year fairs as they can, looking to acquire a new peach blossom, a yellow apricot blossom, or a kumquat tree. These are the three main trees that signal the Lunar New Year in Vietnamese culture. The trees are believed to carry significant spiritual meanings and the ability to foretell the future fortunes of the family. The more buds a tree has, the greater the fortunes will be. Other flowers that come in spring are also on the market, but none carries the cultural significance like peach, apricot, and kumquat trees do. Thus, finding a suitable tree is an important mission that can take days to accomplish. My father once went to three different fairs before he finally found a peach blossom tree that satisfied him. We carried it home as carefully as we could to avoid breaking any branches or dropping any buds, only for our cat to attack the tree as soon as we set it down.
About three days before the Lunar New Year’s Eve, our giant extended family gather back at our ancestor home for the annual sticky rice cake night – in Vietnamese: Banh Chung. It is a long-running tradition that not many families in the metropole areas can afford, as it requires both space and time. Sticky rice cake is the traditional delicacy in Northern Vietnam. It is made of sticky rice as the outer layer, has a green colour from dong leaves, and fillings either from pork and green bean paste, or other beans paste if one wishes to have it vegetarian. As there are many people in our family, we often make about one hundred sticky rice cakes each year. All members arrive at the ancestor home as early as they can make it. The adults teach little kids how to wrap a sticky rice cake correctly and make it into a little competition. Festive music blasts the entire day, and if my uncles are in a good mood, they start singing as well. Around the late afternoon, we prepare an enormous pot to cook the cake overnight. It is the only night in the year that the little ones are allowed to pull an all-nighter as we wait for the cake to be cooked. Not many can actually stay up all night, however. Nonetheless, it is a lovely memory that I have never stopped cherishing.
At noon the next day, we take the cakes out of the pot and wash them thoroughly. If it is possible, my cousins and I will sneak a cake or two for us. Newly cooked sticky rice cakes are warm and soft, and in my humble opinion, taste the best. They can last for two weeks at room temperature, but often become harder and do not taste as good anymore.
The Lunar New Year’s Eve in my memory is always a whirlwind. My mother and I wake up early to do last minute shopping and cooking. We cook enough to last us three days, for it is frowned upon if you turn on the stove or sweep the house during the first three days of the year. It is supposed to be the vacation for our Tao, thus, if you turn on the stove or start sweeping, you summon them back to work and knock all coming fortunes out of the door. It is just rude to interrupt one’s vacation for work reasons. By the evening, when we are exhausted from all the cooking and cleaning, mom shoos me to take a herbal bath to cleanse myself. Then, we enjoy dinner while the television plays our annual comedy show, Tao Quan. Tao Quan runs in the background as we finish dinner, lay our new clothes for tomorrow, and relax. My mother often prepares the Red Envelops during this time – another long-running tradition during the Lunar New Year. Each Envelop carries Lucky Money. As the name suggests, the money in Red Envelopes is considered lucky. We give them to children, with the belief that the more you give, the more you will receive in the next year.
The moment finally arrives as the clock chimes. We hear the echoes of fireworks as I join my parents to pray in front of our shrines. My brother turns on the water pumps – the water represents future fortune flowing to our family. My father then burns the paper offerings to our ancestors, while mom let me demolish the rest of the food. In the blissful state, I often drift off to sleep and miss my uncles’ new year visit. It is yet another tradition: the first person to walk through the door plays a significant role in the fortunes of the family. Their star chart must be compatible with the host, otherwise, they would bring bad luck to us. As my extended family has enough people to fill a small village, we just rotate on whose role it is to walk through the doors. It becomes our own tradition, as my uncles visit each family every year on New Year’s Eve to bring luck to us all.
I go back to my ancestors’ home with my parents on the first day and join my aunts to pray in the village’s pagoda. I rejoice in picking the fortune paper alongside my cousins, and we spend the entire afternoon and evening pouring over our upcoming fortunes. They are cryptic and rarely come true. I am still very much single although my fortune papers had told me to get married at least three times already. But the true delight of the holiday – at least for children – is bumping to as many people as possible to collect Lucky Money. Even strangers on the streets would give us Red Envelopes – the only occasion of the year that adults can give stuff to children without looking suspicious. We count our Lucky Money in a corner together before dinner, as if our parents do not take them from us anyways at the end of the holiday.
The holiday goes by blissfully like that, visiting pagodas and collecting Lucky Money. As I grow up, it is eventually my turn to give back to my little cousins and strangers’ kids, which, let’s be real, is not as fun. The fortune papers remain as cryptic as ever. Depending on where you live, there often are regional spring festivals where more dancing, drinking, and eating is involved. In my home village, we visit our ancestors’ graves on the fourth day of January. We clean their graves, burn some incenses, and learn about our great, great, great, great, great grandparents. It is a sombre day, even the little ones are quieter, as we not only see and listen but also feel the connection to our family, our roots.
As I moved abroad, I lost that feeling of connection. Of course, I miss the food, the banters, the traditions of Lunar New Year in our family. But that loss of connection is something else. It is an emptiness that nothing can fulfil. I long for it as I travel across Europe, visiting graves of strangers I have never known, wistfully dreaming of the day I can go back to my grandparents’ graves and feel whole again.
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