Tet Nguyen Dan is an important holiday at the beginning of the year for Vietnamese people everywhere. During these days, people pay respect to their ancestors and family. Tet meals are an opportunity to gather and share best wishes for a happy and successful new year.
In preparation for the traditional Tet holiday, Vietnamese markets abroad are always bustling with displays and sales of a full range of Tet items. The quality and variety of designs here are no less attractive than those in domestic Tet markets.
Ms. Thao Nguyen - a specialist in agarwood business, currently residing in California - USA and living with her white American husband, said: "Every year my family celebrates Tet in the US, rarely having the opportunity to return to Vietnam. However, I always remember my homeland, the place where I was born, from childhood to adulthood, I have celebrated many Tets at home. Later, when I settled abroad, my Western husband was culturally different from me, so the preparation for Tet was not too elaborate, just enough to remember my homeland, simple, peaceful for the first day of the year, hoping for a peaceful new year".
She added that Phuc Loc Tho market in California does not lack anything, so overseas Vietnamese can buy Chung cake, Tet cake, candy, jam, incense and candles for offerings and Tet decorations for their homes. If anyone cannot return to Vietnam to celebrate Tet, they will miss home less. Thao Nguyen still wears Ao Dai at the beginning of the year to go to the pagoda, every year, and then decorates her house to fill it with a cozy Tet atmosphere.
Flower arrangements for Tet decoration with Chung cake and Tet cake at Ms. Thao Nguyen's home in California, USA
Ms. Thao Nguyen creates a traditional, elegant Tet atmosphere, next to a Buddha statue and hanging mascots symbolizing peace and prosperity.
Families with more members will certainly have more exciting Tet celebrations, like the family of Ms. Chau Pha - currently living and working abroad, her job is to manage a restaurant in Melbourne, Australia.
Through the discussion, Ms. Pha confided: “There were years when Tet came and my family could not return to celebrate Tet with my family in Vietnam, sometimes because the cost was quite high for a trip back to the hometown for all 3 of us, sometimes because the children were still young and every time we went far away, we encountered many difficulties. So every year if I could not return, I would go to the Vietnamese market here, which sells quite a lot of basic things like banh chung, banh tet, nem, cha, cu kieu, fruit, flowers for offerings, etc.
"The good thing is that both my husband and I are from the same hometown, only the baby was born here, so everything from eating, living to holidays is quite easy. I taught the baby from a young age to speak the mother tongue, and the family etiquette from the grandparents' time must be kept intact, so that our children will not lose their roots in the future," said Ms. Pha.
So in addition to the Tet tray full of familiar traditional dishes such as banh tet, cu kieu, nem, cha, dua han, etc., children and older sisters all wear ao dai to take pictures together. More importantly, children are taught to wish their parents and elders in Vietnamese with blessings such as: May everything go as you wish, prosperity, longevity, etc. After that, the children receive lucky money and their parents will wish them good health, luck, good appetite, and fast growth, etc. Then the whole family eats together and goes to the temple, where children are taught to burn incense, bow to Buddha, and pray for peace for the family all year round.
It can be said that the way of conveying and teaching children to understand the traditional Tet in Chau Pha's family really makes everyone need to learn, because to maintain a national "habit" is not easy, especially in the context of living in a foreign country, going through many generations causing many changes, the fact that children later born and raised abroad mostly lose a lot of cultural identity, including the "mother tongue", customs, and many traditional holidays.
For overseas Vietnamese communities, Tet Nguyen Dan has an even more noble and difficult meaning, which is the responsibility to pass on cultural identity to future generations, to preserve their national characteristics in a society with many different cultures and ethnicities. Hopefully, every spring, each Vietnamese family will always join in a traditional Tet atmosphere imbued with national identity and warmth like now, no matter where they are, no matter how much time has changed.
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