| Tet - Vietnamese traditional holiday |
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Tết Nguyên Đán pronunciation, more commonly known by its shortened name Tết, is the most important and popular holiday and festival in Vietnam. It is the Vietnamese New Year which is based on the Lunar calendar, a lunisolar calendar. The name Tết Nguyên Đán is Sino-Vietnamese for Feast of the First Morning, derived from the Hán nôm characters 節元旦.
Tết is celebrated on the same day as Chinese New Year though exceptions arise due to the one-hour time difference between Hanoi and Beijing. It takes place from the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar (around late January or early February) until at least the third day. Tết shares many of the same customs of its Chinese counterpart. Many Vietnamese prepare for Tết by cooking special holiday foods and cleaning the house. There are a lot of customs practiced during Tết, like visiting a person's house on the first day of the new year (xông nhà), ancestral worshipping, wishing New Year's greetings, giving lucky money to children and old people and opening a shop.
Tết is also an occasion for pilgrims and family reunions. During Tết holiday, Vietnamese visit their relatives and temples, forgetting about the troubles of the past year and hoping for a better upcoming year. Tết traditionally marks the coming of spring, so "spring" (Xuân) is sometimes used interchangeably with Tết in Vietnamese.
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