New Year’s Eve in Vietnam also known as Giao Thừa is a time to celebrate the coming of the new year and bidding farewell to the previous year. It consist of many rituals and is very significant for bringing prosperity and good health to the family, work and friends. Altars are set up with offerings to the ancestors filled with fruit, flowers, candy, candles, incense, and red envelopes. The city becomes alive like a buzzing hive full of people. You can feel the festivities in the air. It’s electric.
As a child, I do not have much memory of this very special time. However my sisters do and New Year’s Eve is the most sacred day in the entire year. Just imagine Christmas, ancestral worship, and New Years all rolled up in one. You spend the entire day cleaning the house to sweep away the bad luck. If you sweep on New Year’s Day or a few days after you are sweeping away your good luck and bringing bad luck.
My sisters decided to return to our birth home to experience these rituals. We arrived around 11 pm and the neighborhood was alive. People were in the streets chatting and setting up their altars in front of their homes with little metal tables. Loud music was played from the houses. Lights were strung up and flowers adored the steps to their doors. It was very nostalgic for my sisters and an eye opener for me seeing it with Canadian eyes.
Nearing midnight, you begin to see people praying and burning incense and paper money for their ancestors. They were praying facing their front entrance of their homes while others were facing outwards and in different directions. Some had large fires in metal tins while others were setting off fireworks and had huge bonfires of offerings. My uncle had a little metal table he mounted on his second floor balcony and was more discreet.
My sisters chatted with some neighborhood friends from the past while I wandered around completely culture shocked and took photos.
I hope you enjoy these pictures. It was like going back 40 years for us to experience a tradition that stay rooted and frozen in time. The one stark tradition we didn’t see and perhaps because it’s banned was the little red firecrackers. I remember the sulphur smell and the loud noise, still hidden in my subconscious. If you look at one of the photos, there is a man holding a large string of firecrackers. It’s electric and requires no lighting, but makes the exact piercing popping sound. There’s a little boy plugging his ear because it was deafening. So cute lol.
