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Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, in the New Orleans Vietnamese Community
by Dr. Kathleen Carlin and Cam-Thanh Tran
with the advice of Father Vien The Nguyen and Brother Thieu Nguyen
Chuc mung nam moi! Happy New Year!
Importance of Tet to Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Americans
Preparation - Food and Activities
Celebrating the Days of Tet
Celebrating the Days of Tet
As the days get closer to Tet, there are more festivals and festivities for people to enjoy, and excitement builds as the old year comes to a close. Before midnight on the eve of Tet, people go to their church or temple for a special service. The Catholic Church in Vietnam has a special liturgical service for Tet, but here in the United States the Tet Eve mass follows the regular liturgical calendar. Br. Thieu Nguyen of the Lien Hoa Buddhist Temple described the special New Year's Eve service as beginning with a homily by a monk about the meaning of Tet traditions and the importance of following good examples in the New Year, followed by prayers offered for an auspicious new year. Between this evening service and midnight, the dragon dancers usually arrive and, amid deafening firecrackers, enter the temple where the dragon dances and is given dollars by people who want to attract special luck through this personal contact with the dragon. At midnight, the children are given red envelopes with lì xì (lucky money), and congregants receive apples or oranges. People leave the temple after midnight, usually after making their personal prayers and lighting incense sticks in front of the altar to Buddha and various bodhisattvas (who can be described as Buddhist saints). Once home, many families will offer prayers, flowers, and food-especially rice dishes and fruit-and sometimes money on their family altars.
Vietnamese Tet (New Year Celebration) in New Orleans in 2007.
Photos: Mark Sindler
In Vietnam, preparations for Tet occasion a month of bustle and hurry, but when the new year actually arrives the whole country stops for three days to enjoy the week, or weeks, following. People are on their best behavior; everyone tries to speak nicely to each other, to refrain from gossip, and not to punish their children (and of course children should not be deserving of punishment, either). The first day augurs the New Year, and the first visitor to enter a home is considered extremely important. People primarily socialize with family on the first day, and only invite specific visitors who are felt will bring good fortune with them (i.e., because their names are auspicious, because they are prosperous, or because they have large, healthy families). (The Lonely Planet guidebook to Vietnam advises travelers not to visit anyone in Vietnam on the first day unless explicitly invited, and then to confirm the time.) There is much more visiting on the second and third days of Tet. In Vietnam there are additional special liturgical prayers in the Catholic church on each of the first three days of Tet.
Here in the United States, celebrating Tet is a bit different because the general culture does not mark the holiday. People continue to go to work and school if Tet falls on a weekday, and the grander celebration is held off until the weekend. As Br. Thieu Nguyen said, "In Vietnam, the family must get together; here, the family should get together." The three Vietnamese Catholic churches in New Orleans take turns holding fairs for the two weekends before and the weekend after Tet, with Woodlawn usually first, Marrero second, and Mary Queen of Vietnam having the largest fair the weekend after Tet. There are tents and booths selling food, booths of games, community displays, and staged entertainment by both community and professional singers and musicians. The New Orleans East Tet fair in 2006, just five months after Hurricane Katrina, had a record 20,000 attendees over the course of three days.
Gradually the excitement levels off, visitors go home, life returns to normal, and everyone will find out just how much good fortune the new year has brought them. But everyone is also anticipating the next great holiday-only a year away. The holiday of Tet Nguyen Dan embodies key elements of Vietnamese identity-family, cultural heritage, contact with the religious and spiritual world, pleasure in social activities-and if anything the festival is growing stronger in communities of the Vietnamese diaspora, as the generations settle, succeed, and share their celebration with their neighbors.
Dr. Kathleen Carlin is an educator and an independent anthropologist in New Orleans. She has been working with the Vietnamese community in New Orleans for many years, lately especially with the Intercultural Charter School and the Tulane School of Public Health. Cam-Thanh Tran is an educator who moved to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. She works with Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corporation and has been very involved in founding the Intercultural Charter School in New Orleans East. She is active in community affairs and has a longtime interest in Vietnamese culture. This article was prepared as part of the New Populations Project.
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