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Tet and its protective customs
Vietnam's new year, with the kitchen god sent to heaven, a first visitor chosen for luck and a tall pole to keep spirits out.
About Tet and its protective customs
Tet is the Vietnamese lunar new year, the biggest festival of the year. A week before, on the 23rd of the twelfth month, families send the Kitchen God, Ong Tao, to heaven to report on the household, offering him sweets and sometimes a paper carp to ride. At midnight on the new year, the first person to enter the home (xong dat) is believed to set the family's fortune, so households invite someone of a suitable birth year and good character. A tall bamboo pole, the cay neu, was traditionally raised in the yard to keep evil spirits from the house, with its hung charms and tokens. Many families avoid sweeping, lending money or quarrelling in the first days, and visit temples to draw fortune sticks.
Also part of it, and being written: Tết (The festival and its customs.), Kitchen God (The household god who reports to heaven.).
Written by the EveryJaadu desk with AI assistance. Background: "Tết" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family, and are described as belief and practice. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.