TET (Lunar calendar: Month 1, Day 1)
The single most important festival of the year. It's Christmas and Thanksgiving and everybody's birthday all rolled up in one. The country quite literally stops for a week while everyone hurries around preparing for the big event(s). Flights in and out of the country are booked up to a year in advance.
Holiday of the Dead (Month 3, Day 5)
Graveyards will be crowded as families pay their respects to the ancestors. They clean up the grave and make traditional offerings. This is seen as a happy time, not a day of mourning.
Buddha's Birth, Enlightenment, and Death (Month 4, Day 8)
Pagodas and temples will light up with paper lanterns, incense, and other decorations. Processions take place after dark.
Summer Solstice (Month 5, Day 5)
Offerings are made to the God of Death and his emissaries.
Wandering Souls Day (Month 7, Day 15)
Offerings are made to the wandering souls of the forgotten dead. Included in this group are those who are buried in unknown locations. Because so many Vietnamese soldiers were buried in mass unmarked graves, many families are personally involved with this holiday. (excerpt old woman)
Mid-Autumn Festival (Month 8, Day 15)
The children make lovely paper lanterns in all sorts of shapes (dragons, rabbits, etc.) and carry them down to the water, where they are released to float away. Moon cakes and lotus seeds also figure prominently.
Feb. 3 Anniversary of the founding of the Vietnamese Communist Party (1930)
April 30 Liberation Day (anniversary of the liberation of South Vietnam, 1975))
May 1 International Worker's Day
May 19 Ho Chi Minh's Birthday (1890)
Sept. 2 National Day (anniversary of the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam by Ho Chi Minh in 1945)
Dec. 25 (Christmas)
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