Tet 2015 - Happy Year of the Goat!

Chúc Mừng Năm Mới (Happy New Year)!  Tết (pronounced thet) is Vietnamese new year and the biggest celebration in Vietnam.  The entire country parties for 2 weeks straight.  Most businesses are closed so they can celebrate at home with their families, however, open air markets are set up with vendors selling flowers, food, and new clothes for the hundreds of thousands celebrating in the streets.  Even the families with the most modest of means will buy new clothes to wear in order to ring in the new year.  Remnants of firecrackers cover the streets and lion dance drums can be heard in every corner.

The traditions continued even when we immigrated to the United States and the very non-Asian town of San Antonio.  When I was a kid, my grandmother would cook for days and offer the food to my deceased ancestors.  We never had elaborate dinner parties, however, for Tết, the kitchen table would be set with a pressed tablecloth and our best dinnerware.  I remember my grandmother in a heavy coat and head scarf shivering on my front porch as she burned hell money and gold so my ancestors had it to spend in their afterlife.  I wonder what my neighbors thought.  Bright marigolds and the smell of incense permeated endlessly throughout my house for 14 days.  

My grandmother spent days making the very time and labor intensive bánh tét which are tightly packed sticky rice with meat, banana, or bean fillings wrapped in banana leaves.  Her banana filled bánh tét was the thing I looked forward to every new year and still haven't tasted a better one than my grandmother's.  Seriously, I'm not being nostalgic or biased.  Our Vietnamese friends and family members in San Antonio would agree.

Now that I have kids, I'm trying to better understand the cultural lessons I took for granted when my grandmother was relaying them to me when I was a child ... so I can share them with my kids, who I'm sure will also take them for granted.  

We welcomed the year of the goat watching the lion dancers' athleticism (also a favorite of mine).  Loud firecrackers competed with the dancers' drums and the smell of gun powder and incense filled the air.  Ahh, reminds me of childhood and perhaps subconsciously Rocky and Peanut will also retain some of these memories.