Tet Customs Tet is the time when visitors find Vietnam in its best colorful festive atmosphere. Certainly, it is not representative of everyday life when holiday clothing is worn, special foods are prepared, and colorful papers and lights decorate houses, shops, hotels and markets. Tet is also everybody's birthday. Everyone becomes one year older on New Year's Day. As soon as a child was born, even just days before New Year's Day, he or she is one year old. Then on the first day of the year, that child is considered to be two years old. Each year is named sequentially after one of 12 animals of the zodiac: the rat, ox, tiger, cat, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, cock, dog and pig. This year is the year of the rat. Doing business in Vietnam at this time of the year, however, presents a few advantages as well as disadvantages. It is an appropriate occasion when businesspeople treating each other generously, enhancing business relationships as well as making new contacts. However, Tet is set aside as a time of rest, family reunion and celebration. Offices, shops, and markets are closed, not just one day but may extend for the whole week. Business interrupts for at least 3 days. Public transportation is jammed with people. Hotel accommodations are hard to find. People want to be with their families for at least the three most special days of Tet so they can celebrate the holidays together, as a result, your guides and drivers might reluctant to fulfill your requests unless he is desperately in need of money. For the Vietnamese, Tet is the time to evaluate achievements, recall successes as well as regrets of the past year. It is the time for putting on one's best and newest clothes and forgetting all worries and sadness. It also is the occasion for children and adults to indulge in gambling and play favorite games for money. Pre-Tet is an occasion for shopping, the time to pay off all debts and returning all borrow things. It is believed that by not doing so, there will be more debts next year. To prepare for the new beginning, the Vietnamese, whether poor or well-to-do, tend to spend good amounts of money on new cloths, special foods, flowers, and presents. It is also the time for enjoying traditional foods especially prepared for Tet. The preparation of foods might require days before Tet and should be enough to last throughout the holidays. The seasonal favorite are banh chung and banh tet. In the north, banh chung, a special square rice dish, is made of sticky rice, yellow beans, fatty pork wrapped in banana leaves and boiled for about 10 hours. Banh tet, a similar dish in a cylindrical shape, is served in the south. For sweets, candies or dried fruits called mut are popular. Vietnamese often enjoy various sweetened dried fruits such as winter melon, coconut shreds, hot sen (lotus seeds), gung (ginger roots), etc. Weeks before Tet is also the time for cleaning up their home, and polishing altar brassware. Usually, no cleaning is done during the holidays. Everything including the graves of ancestors must be cleaned in advance. Seven days before New Year's Day, Tao-Quan (the Spirit of the Hearth or the stove god) ritual is performed. This is the first pre-Tet ceremony for sending Tao-Quan off to Heaven to report all important events on the household during the past year to the Jade Emperor (Ngoc- Hoang Thuong-De). Vietnamese like to decorate their homes with branches of plum tree (cay mai) or peach tree (cay dao) blossoms. Also miniature orange bushes are carefully selected and prepared in such a way that they bear fruit just at Tet as a sign of good luck. In the countryside, cay neu is placed in front yard to ward of evil spirits. On New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, Masses are conducted in churches for Catholics and Protestants. Confucianists and Buddhists perform rituals in temples or pagodas. For Confucianists and Buddhists, special attention is focused on the family altar, which will be set up at home, adorned with incense, fruits, and flowers. At Giao Thua (midnight of the New Year's Eve), the head of the family will perform religious rituals in front of the altar to worship Buddha, ancestors, and pray for happiness (phuoc), prosperity (loc), and longevity (tho). Offering is made to deceased family members who are invited back (of course in spirits) into the family to enjoy a meal with the living. At exactly midnight, drums and bells welcome the new year. Firecrackers have been banned for couple years by the government. Children are allowed to stay up late and wait for the traditional money gift li xi placed in a small red envelope given out by their parents and people of higher ranks in the family. The festive mood spreads throughout the country and is enhanced with dragon dances and flowers everywhere. People like to hang the money on the stick placed in front of their house (for the dragon dancers) since it is believed that when the dragon dances in front of a shop or a house, it will bring prosperity to that household. Another custom is worth to call to your attention. Though it is considered an honor, be cautious about being the first visitor on New Year Day, unless you are specifically asked. To the Vietnamese, starting the year properly is very important. It is customary belief that the 1st week especially the 1st day of the new year will determined one's fortune for the rest of the year. Many Vietnamese strongly believe that the first visitor of the New Year to enter the house brings with him good or bad luck for the whole year. A common practice is to invite a pre-selected person to visit to make sure that luck is not left to fate. Great care is taken to select the first visitor (usually a man) whom they know well. He is likely to be a good person, wealthy, high status and successful in life. They would ask him to come and xong dat (meaning "open the door"). He would exchange wishes with the family's members and will be offered some foods and drinks to toast the new year. It is also customary that people wish each other all sorts of good things. For some families, if during the year, they are stricken by misfortune, the visitor might be blamed and might not be invited next year. Because of this belief, it is understandable that some people are reluctant to act as the first visitor of the year.