Vinh Nguyen, Tet Traditions: Transcript

Educator & Vietnamese culture specialist
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Everybody is longing for Tet, believe me. The Vietnamese want to go to Tet so they can meet their old friend. They can have time to begin to exchange something that they haven't had time to do.

My name is Vinh Nguyen. I was born in Vietnam. I came to the state in 1983.

Tet is the greatest holiday, the biggest holiday for Vietnamese. If you combine July 4th, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, and everything else you have in United States, it is Tet for Vietnamese.

Vietnamese Tet lasts from three days to many days. It depend on the region of Vietnam. Most likely in the city we celebrate Tet for three days. But in the countryside, that's the off- season for them to harvest; therefore, Tet can be celebrate about two weeks to a month.

We have to prepare quite a lot for Tet. When I was growing up, my mom prepared Tet for a month ahead. She begin to buy food and pickle different vegetable and different food, prepare some of the very Vietnamese traditional food, Le Binh, and also to clean the houses. I mean the house had to be spot clean. They need—if it need a fresh coat of paint, we need to do that.

When I was growing up, I remember at school, that's the time that we also thanked teacher. We have celebration among ourselves and to say good-bye because that's our—Tet break lasted four months.

And this is how the Tet begin. On the 23rd day of December, the family gathered together to send the Kitchen God—what we call the Kitchen God, because the Vietnamese believe that there is an angel or god who stay in the kitchen who knows everything about a family through the years. So on the 23rd of December, we sent that god back to the heaven so he can report to the king everything happen to our family, or something that our family have to suffer throughout a year. So when the king listen to that god, and then he would send some well wishes back to us.

The day right before Tet we begin to invite our ancestor back home, so at 12 o'clock midnight, we set up an altar out there in front of the house. We pray. The family gather and then invite our ancestors back to our family to enjoy Tet with the family member.

In Southern California you will enjoy Tet much more than you live in Des Moines, because the Vietnamese American community there is larger. They have a couple hundred thousand people, but in Des Moines we have about roughly 10,000 people, so therefore the celebration is much more limited.

We try to reenact many things that we have done in Vietnam. Try to help people to remember what they have missed in the last few years.