Today's full moon marks the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. This moon marks a major holiday in many Asian cultures. In Vietnam, the holiday is called Tết Trung Thu.
I used to think that Tết meant the lunar new year. Actually, the new year is called Tết Nguyên Đán. I found out that there are four traditional holidays in Vietnam called Tết. The others are the lantern festival on the full moon of the first month, and the mid-year festival on the fifth day of the fifth month, called Tết Nguyên Tiêu and Tết Đoan ngọ respectively.
In Vietnam, the mid-autumn festival is a celebration of children. In the evening, parents fawn over their kids, give them presents, and feed them rich and savory sweets. They eat square mooncakes filled with seeds, dried fruits and dried meats. Together, families bring tea, wine or mooncakes to relatives, then venture outside to sing, light lanterns, watch lion dances, and admire the full harvest moon. In the moon, people say they can see a person who, according to folklore, was carried there tangled in the roots of a sacred banyan tree. Whether this person was a man or a woman is unclear to me.
Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!
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