Ca Dong people join the new rice festival

In the At Ty crop season at the end of 2025, the Ca Dong people will have time to harvest rice before the flood, leaving rice and sticky rice to celebrate the New Year and Uncle Ho's New Year - Lunar New Year Binh Ngo 2026. Photo: NGAN THANH.

Welcome the rice spirit, welcome the golden season

According to veteran Ca Dong village elder, Meritorious Artisan Ho Van Dinh (93 years old) in Tam Lang village, hamlet 3, Tra Doc commune, the lunar year 2025 (At Ty) has two leap months of June, so this year's Tet holiday of the Ca Dong people in Tam Lang area comes later than every year. At the end of October and the beginning of November of the lunar calendar, the time when people celebrate Tet, it is already the last days of the solar year, preparing to welcome the new year 2026.

From September to November of the lunar calendar, when the forest changes its appearance and the P'rang birds fly back to perch on the roofs, the Ca Dong people know that the harvest season has arrived. Throughout the villages of Tra Giap, Tra Doc, Tra Tan, Tra Van... people prepare to enter the most important festival of the year: the New Rice Celebration.

The ceremony begins with the Rice Spirit Procession, reserved only for the women of the family. From early morning, the wife or eldest sister carries a basket, stone grass, and beeswax to the field. They go to the rice bushes they planted themselves, tie three stone grasses into a Padam to call the rice spirit back home. The rice is gently threshed and brought back to cook rice to offer to the gods. The whole family eats all the rice as a promise to heaven and earth. The harvest is officially started the next morning.

The ripe rice season from September to November of the lunar calendar covers Tra My mountains and forests in a new coat, which is also the time when the Ca Dong people celebrate the New Rice Festival. Photo: NGUYEN BINH

Next is the ritual of celebrating the new rice harvest at home. The offering tray includes a jar of rice wine, new rice, and betel and areca nuts placed at the “heavenly gate”, a small door to welcome the gods. The oldest person prays to invite the rice god, the earth god, and ancestors to attend the ceremony. After asking for the rice, the whole village beats gongs and dances all night around the fire.

Old Dinh said: “Celebrating the new rice crop is to show gratitude to heaven and earth, to our ancestors. Without them, there would be no glutinous rice grains, no full stomachs. This ceremony is the soul of the Ca Dong people, to abandon it is to lose oneself.” In the previous crop season, old Dinh presided over dozens of ceremonies to eat buffalo flowers and buffalo leaves. The ritual of sacrificing, eating chicken, eating pork, eating buffalo is a spiritual wish, a message from the homeowner to the gods, especially the rice god, hoping for a good harvest next season.

Preserve identity, abandon bad customs

In Boa village (village 3, Tra Giap commune), village elder Nguyen Van Dong (88 years old) said that the floods at the end of the year washed away many roads, rocks fell down, making it difficult for people to travel and trade. However, after harvesting before the flood, villagers still celebrated the harvest festival. "Households with little do little, families with much do much. The important thing is that the children and grandchildren gather together, thank the rice god, and hope for a peaceful new year," said elder Dong.

*Ca Dong people in Tam Lang village, Tra Doc commune, play drums and gongs, sing Cheo songs, dance, and offer buffalo meat to celebrate the new rice season. Photo: NGUYEN BINH*

In Boa village, the practice of eating buffalo leaves or buffalo flowers has rarely been held for many years. People believe that buffalo is a valuable animal for plowing and providing fertilizer for the fields, so the ceremony is mainly symbolic, with a light ceremony but still maintaining all the rituals. For well-off Ca Dong families, a larger ceremony includes eating buffalo leaves or buffalo flowers.

The buffalo eating ceremony takes about a week to prepare: setting up the pole, brewing rice wine, preparing sticky rice, and offerings. The buffalo is tied to the pole in the middle of the yard; villagers play gongs, sing and dance, ask for glue, and then the ceremony begins.

The buffalo flower ceremony is bigger, lasting three days and two nights, and is prepared a month in advance. The rice wine is brewed in advance, a tree is chosen to make a pole, hundreds of tubes of sticky rice, rice cakes, chicken, and pork are prepared. The whole village gathers, gongs and drums resound in the mountains and forests, and children and grandchildren happily reunite.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Kien, Chairwoman of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee of Tra Giap commune, said: "The government encourages people to hold ceremonies in a civilized and economical manner. The offerings can be simplified, but still maintain the spirit of solidarity, coziness and respect for the gods."

*Every year, Nuoc Oa Ethnic Boarding Secondary and High School (Tra My commune) reenacts the New Rice Celebration ceremony, helping students love and preserve national identity. Photo: NGUYEN BINH*

The New Rice Festival is also an occasion to showcase the Ca Dong cultural identity: the bustling sound of gongs, the soft Cheo singing, ancient prayers, and simple folk dances. Children get to listen to old stories; boys and girls have the opportunity to meet and make friends; and the elderly get to review the customs of their ancestors.

In the flow of integration, many traditional values are at risk of being lost. Therefore, the localities of Tra Giap, Tra Doc, Tra Tan, Tra My… have included the New Rice Celebration ceremony in the cultural preservation program, restored and performed in festivals. Schools organize extracurricular activities to reenact the ritual, so that children can appreciate the customs of their ethnic group.

Source: https://baodanang.vn/nguoi-ca-dong-vao-hoi-mung-lua-moi-3314228.html