Traditional Festivals

Vietnamese Lunar New Year (Tet) is celebrated from the 1st day of the first month of the Chinese calendar until at least the third day. It is the biggest festival of Vietnamese traditional festivals. Vietnamese Lunar New Year since the creation of the world conveys a lot of humanity values and shows relationship between human, nature, and universe. Tet is also an occasion for Vietnamese to commemorate and thank ancestors, etc.          

Before Tet, Vietnamese clean and decorate their home, hang pictures, display fruit and flowers, “invite” ancestors to enjoy Tet. Ochna integerrima (hoa mai) in Dongnai is a kind of flower that is indispensable in every home in first days of Tet.  

During Tet, beside cakes and fruits, there is a tray of five fruits on every family’s altar, called Ngu Qua. Ngu Qua in Dongnai like many other cities and provinces in the South includes coconuts, custard apples, papayas, unripe mangos, a bunch of figs and another fruit. Ngu Qua is the gift from the god and conveys people’s concept of a thirst for adequacy and prosperity. During Tet, People in Dongnai still maintain traditional fine customs such as beginning a new-year writing, picking a tree bud, saying wishes for Tet, enjoying the spring, congratulating longevity of others, etc.

The ghost festival religiously is the day for absolution of the dead-all culprits in Hades are forgiven on this day. Therefore, on earth, all families make banquets and feats, burn joss papers to pay homage to ancestors and worship lost and uncared-for ghosts. Vietnamese also release birds to the sky and set free fish to rivers to become a good Samaritan.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated in all Vietnamese families amid autumn on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. The festival is one for children. 

A delicious cake only made and displayed to sell on this festival is Moon Cake (Banh Trung Thu). Children enjoy the festival with colorful  Chinese lanterns, lanterns, star shaped lanterns, etc. with which they bring along the street. Moreover, there are lion dances, earth god dances beside sounds of trumps and shouts. On this occasion, in order to watch the full moon, many activities are held. Adults have their own activities and so do children.