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The Vietnamese New Year - Tet Nguyen Dan

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Once upon a time, there was an anecdote that said thousands of years ago in a small village of Vietnam, there was a monster who came one winter’s eve and destroyed the village. The following year, the monster returned and destroyed the village again. Before it could happened a third time, the villagers worked out a plan to scare the monster away. Throughout the whole village, red banners were hung; the color red had long been believed to protect against evil. Firecrackers, drums and gongs were used to celebrate loud noises to scare the monster away. The plan worked and the celebration lasted several days during which people visited with each other, exchanged gifts, danced, and ate tasty food (Lisa Chiu 1).There are always significant holidays to every country. Holiday is defined as a day free from work that people may spend time to relax and especially a day of stopping all of the general business activities to celebrate and dedicate a particular event. In religious term, it is a holy day. For example, American people celebrate holidays such as, Thanksgiving and Christmas, some Hispanics celebrate Cinco de Mayo, and for Vietnamese people, there is an important holiday which is the Vietnamese New Year. Tet is known as the Vietnamese’s New Year ,it is time to prepare for the upcoming year, this is also the time to connect and buildup a better relationship, memorize and be filial to the ancestors, bring luck and be respected to each others . The New Year begins on the first night of the first moon. This is sometime between January 21 and February 19 on the solar calendar. The day of the New Year varied depends on the phases of the moon. Traditionally, Tet takes weeks of preparation. All homes must be cleaned to get rid of bad fortune associated with the old year. According to the superstition of the great amount of people who live in Vietnam, Khanh Loan, the author of the article “Tet Nguyen Dan” explains that, It is considered bad luck to start the New Year cleaning and still owned debt because people believe that sweeping will push all the good fortunes away and also debt is symbolized “curse” in this circumstance, it will make the following year become bad (5). Therefore, every member in the family participates in the preparation and cleaning process. The hou

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