DIOCESAN NEWS
02/16/07
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Tet tradition: not a superstitious celebration
By Kimberly Nguyen
     JACKSON – Where in Jackson can you find dragon dancing and little red envelopes with special treats inside? Where can you find a celebration with a ton of joyous children running around, as adults and teens alike gather together celebrating the upcoming “Year of the Pig”?
     If learning more about foreign cultures and having fun celebrating another New Year’s is what you would like to do, then getting on the internet and gathering information is just a click away. But in a world where experience is the “in” thing, being a part of the celebration will be the more fun, unforgettable experience.
     Following the American calendar, New Year’s is on Jan. 1. However, following the lunar calendar year, the Vietnamese New Year — called Tet — falls on Feb. 18.
     On this day, the Vietnamese community of Jackson will be celebrating and ushering in the New Year among family and friends. After the Vietnamese Mass at 1 p.m., the Tet celebration will begin at St. Therese Church in Jackson.
     Given the chance to party, who would honestly by pass that chance? But add in lots of sweet desserts, homecooked authentic Vietnamese dishes, lucky money, and music and you would have to be a fool to let this experience slip by unnoticed.
     Special foods served only during the Tet celebrations include Banh Chung and Banh Tet. These are sweet rice rolls with either pork or mung bean fillings inside all wrapped in banana leaves. Depending on whether you would like sweet or salty, either of the two types are delicious and delectable.
     Watermelon is another sweet dessert that really helps to celebrate old traditions. The sweeter the melon, the better, and because red is considered to be a lucky traditional color, the darker the flesh of the melon the better. Watermelon seeds are also really popular. To hold in with the lucky color tradition, the seeds are usually dyed in red.
     Many other sweets include crystalized sugared ginger, coconut strips, lotus seeds, sesame candy, sugared carrots, sugared white gourd.
     These and other dishes and desserts are just a few of many that are prepared and then shared by the Vietnamese people during Tet.
     Being a Catholic, Vietnamese-American is already hard, but being a kid of the second and third generation is even harder.
     The old traditions seem to get lost the more Vietnamese kids get “Americanized.”
     Once a year Vietnamese Catholics can gather together after a Mass to bring out the other old traditions and to learn and have fun. The performed dragon dance is a symbolic dance used to reminisce about Vietnamese cultural history.
     As they feast and celebrate together, the Vietnamese community will gather to thank God, once again praising him for helping us, guiding us, and protecting us during our daily lives and in this New Year.
(Kimberly Nguyen is a senior at Madison Central High School in Madison.)

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