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| Têt | |
|---|---|
| Name | Têt |
| Native name | Tết Nguyên Đán |
| Observed by | Vietnamese people, Overseas Vietnamese, Hoa people, Kinh people |
| Significance | Lunar New Year festival marking the arrival of spring and the start of the lunisolar year |
| Date | First day of the Lunar calendar month of first lunar month (varies) |
| Frequency | Annual |
| Type | Cultural, public holiday |
Têt is the Vietnamese celebration of the lunar new year, the most important traditional festival in Vietnamese culture. It combines indigenous customs, Confucian rites, Buddhist observances, and influences from Chinese calendrical practice. The festival marks a time for familial reunions, ancestral veneration, renewal, and public celebration across urban centers such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Hue.
The festival’s name derives from Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary, incorporating characters used in Classical Chinese and reflecting historical linguistic contact with Tang dynasty and later Ming dynasty administrative culture. The compound term connects to concepts of "first" in the lunisolar cycle and to rites documented in pre-modern Vietnamese annals preserved in collections associated with Nguyễn dynasty scholarship and Provincial mandarins.
Celebratory practices trace to agricultural rites of premodern Red River Delta and Mekong Delta communities and were shaped by interactions with Han dynasty institutions, Cham people exchanges, and later French Indochina colonial transformations. Royal courts in Thăng Long and Huế codified court ceremonies that were recorded by Nguyễn lords and chroniclers such as those associated with the Đại Nam thực lục. During the 20th century, revolutionary movements including Viet Minh and political transitions involving State of Vietnam and Socialist Republic of Vietnam influenced public holidays and state patronage of festival forms. The festival retains symbolic roles in rites of passage documented in ethnographic studies from institutions like École française d'Extrême-Orient and museums in Hanoi.
Family rituals center on ancestral altars in households in regions such as Cao Bằng and Đà Nẵng, where households perform offerings similar to rites recorded in Confucian family registers. Practices include "first visitor" customs that recall folkloric figures and beliefs also noted in oral histories collected by scholars at Vietnam National University, Hanoi and Vietnam National Museum of History. Public rituals include paired performances derived from Chinese New Year troupes, processions resembling those preserved in Imperial City, Huế, and folk theater forms like chèo and water puppetry that appear in provincial festivals.
Culinary staples include glutinous rice preparations comparable to ritual foods referenced in Tang-era sources, with regionally distinctive items served in Saigon households. Representative dishes such as square sticky rice cakes and cylindrical rice cakes, associated with creation myths and courtly banquets of the Nguyễn dynasty, accompany offerings of fruits, pickled vegetables, and preserved meats found in household inventories recorded by archivists at Vietnam National Archives. Symbolic items include red envelopes reflecting shared cultural motifs with Chinese red envelopes and decorative paper artifacts seen in historic bazaars like those of Hanoi Old Quarter.
Preparations encompass house cleaning traditions, communal market activity around urban hubs like the Ben Thanh Market and flower markets in Mỹ Tho and Đà Lạt, and administrative holiday planning by municipal authorities in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Official parades, fireworks, and cultural programs have been coordinated by entities such as the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (Vietnam) and staged at venues including Nguyễn Văn Cừ Stadium and public squares adjacent to the Hoàn Kiếm Lake precinct. Media coverage by outlets such as Vietnam Television and event documentation by cultural institutes highlight state and civil society roles.
Communities in cities such as San Jose, California, Melbourne, Paris, Toronto, and Sydney maintain temple rites, street festivals, and business customs that mirror homeland practices. Diaspora organizations, temples affiliated with Vietnamese Buddhist Youth Association chapters, and community associations often organize Tet fairs, lion dances, and intergenerational programming, while municipal governments in host cities coordinate permits and public-safety provisions reminiscent of community events preserved in immigrant archives and oral-history projects.
Category:Vietnamese festivals Category:Lunar New Year observances