Chúc mừng năm mới" (Happy New Year, Asian-style)!
Tết is the Vietnamese New Year, the marking of spring based on the lunar calendar. It is usually celebrated on the same day as Chinese New Year (which is rather big out here on the west coast/California!), falls in January or early February (this year, New Year was Feb 3), and is celebrated for anywhere from three- fourteen days! This is the year of the cat.
There are many Tết-related customs which I learned about this year (last year, we were on our way to the Philippines and didn't have much exposure). It is a really big deal around here, and much more celebrated than our regular old "calendar year" New Year of Jan 1:
- cleaning the house (supposedly you are not allowed to clean on the new year, which makes many people feel obligated to clean frantically in the days leading up to the holiday; sweeping after the New Year is not allowed as it represents "sweeping the luck away")
- decorating the house: Most people erect a cây nêu, or an artificial New Year's tree, a bamboo pole decorated with charms and origami paper products
- cooking and eating lots of delicious food
- paying all of your debts
- going home and visiting lots of extended family
- giving money to children and elderly people; children are supposed to give a "new year's greeting" (such as wishing health, longevity, security) before they can receive money in red envelopes from their elders
- giving other gifts (especially "red" things and things related to the lucky numbers 6 or 8)
- strict policies on visitors: the Vietnamese believe that the first visitor a family receives in the year determines their fortune for the entire year; therefore, you should never enter the home of another family on New Year unless invited first (lest you be an "unlucky" person and set an unlucky tone!). It is an honor to be "the one invited" to a family's house. I heard that, to prevent a potentially "unlucky" person from being the "first enterer," the owner of the house sometimes slips out of the house shortly before midnight and returns just after midnight to be the "first" back in!
No-nos for Tết include:
- saying or doing bad things during the New Year
- sweeping as above
- giving unlucky gifts (watches/clocks, medicine, scissors/knives)
- eating duck or shrimp (unlucky, and representing poor prospects of success, respectively)
- wearing black or white (white being the color of funerals in Vietnam)
Enjoy the pictures from the weekend (I hope shopping is allowable during Tết, we we did quite a bit of it!)!
Kelvin and his college friend, Jackie, at Santana Row in San Jose (this was my first time to this upscale outdoor mall, and I loved it! We just had to stop at the Container Store, one of my absolute stores ever :))
Santa Clara Co. Fairgrounds for the Tết Festival
inside...
I loved seeing all the kids in their áo dàis.
We ate good food and watched the conclusion of a beauty pageant.
What would an Asian celebration be without a ping pong tournament...?
We then left the fairgrounds for a bit more shopping...
Even the malls seemed to embrace the New Year theme! (but the red may have had to do with an American Heart Association celebration, not one for Tết)
Can you believe that this was my first time in a photo booth in my life thus far? :)
We stayed overnight with some of K's family's friends in S.J. and then met up with Erin/TJ for a yummy breakfast on Sunday.
We hit up the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield (only my 2nd time there), where K got to try such delicious flavors as barf and canned dogfood, before returning home for the Superbowl at Serena & Brad's!
Great times, great weather (it was in the 70s and sunny!), and great football (yay, Packers).
Happy New Year!
1 comment:
Very educational.
Post a Comment