Prof. Assoc. HUNG NGUYEN MANH

However, there are villages that organize the “ceremony to wish for longevity” accordingly to a strict hierarchical defining – based on the old age reached.

After the three days of Tết, well-to-do people hold a Tết ceremony for their buffaloes.

This is because the booming of crackers brings about a sense of joy, happiness and enlivening for the Vietnamese. For that reason, people also fire crackers on occasions such as entertainments, weddings and mournings.

Although Tết ends since the fourth day of the first month, the villagers continue their holiday until they bring down the Tết pole to begin farming and trading.

From the Court means from Huế, the City in which the Court still exists. But, how was Tết greeted by everybody? Let’s hear Tú Xương describing it to us.

Being a “pubescent girl” Cô Kí has become a concubine of a clerk and had died “on the first day of the new year.

The teachers, scholars, mandarins who don’t touch the earth but only touch the paper and pen have to choose a propitious day to write.

The recelebration of Tết also bears the meaning that, as the first time everybody were not present, people recelebrate it a second time to have everybody at home.

In the last days of the year, some old people dare not stay at home and go to pagodas or temples. They wait there until the new year’s eve (the transitional hour) to go back home.

In the last days of the year, some old people dare not stay at home and go to pagodas or temples. They wait there until the new year’s eve (the transitional hour) to go back home.