Mid-Autumn Festival
The Mid-Autumn Festival, or “Tết Trung Thu”, is one of the biggest festivals in Vietnam. It is traditionally celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th Lunar Month when the moon is roundest and fullest, after rice has been harvested. It is a celebration of the changing of seasons from an excruciatingly hot summer to a cooler, milder autumn. The Festival is a time for thanksgiving, praying, honoring ancestors, gathering and family reunion. Lanterns and decorations fill the streets as people prepare for the festival, cooking the traditional treat, Mooncake: a pastry served steamed or fried and filled with lotus seed, ground mung bean, and egg; variations may also contain taro, ham, pandan and honeydew. Households and families gather and offer sacrifices to the God of Earth, praying for wealth, fertility, happiness and good health. The sounds of singing, laughing and drumming bands echo through the villages and cities as crowds gather to watch the parading Lion and Dragon Dances.
For children, the Mid-Autumn Festival is the happiest night of the year. Although they must attend school during the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, children get to walk around during the night and play folk games. For Western cultures, the Mid-Autumn Festival has similarities to Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Christmas. Children play an important role in the Festival as they are seen as pure and innocent, a connection to the sacred natural world. Traditionally after the harvest, families and neighbors would gather to spend a happy moment together and take a break from a busy year of work. Busy parents spend time with their children and older generations and younger generations enjoy the activities and fun atmosphere together.. For young men and women, the Mid-Autumn Festival also can provide them a chance to meet a future companion. The full-moon atmosphere creates a traditional backdrop for future romances dating back to stories when groups of young men and women would gather, reciting verses of poetry often winning prizes and even possibilities of courtship and marriage.
The celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival dates back to the Shang Dynasty, circa 1600-1046 B.C.E. to a practice of worshipping Mountain Gods during a Full Moon after completing a harvest. This later became a celebration of the Moon Goddess, during which people would pray for fertility and a bountiful harvest. Today the Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated all throughout Asia. China, Japan, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, and Thailand all celebrate the Mid-Autumn festival and have different iterations of the holiday and folklore of its origin. The folk tales of Vietnam have many stories about its meaning, the most interesting of which is the story of Cuội, a man in the Moon separated from his wife, counting the passing days and years until he can return to Earth to see his lost love. Mid-Autumn Festival is truly the most extraordinary celebration of the culture of Vietnam.