Being a Vietnamese person who moved to Canada alone at 16 forced me to grow up early and adapt to a new environment by giving up certain traditions of my culture. Tết, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, is one of them. But turning 21 this year made me realize I should embrace my Vietnamese culture and try to preserve the traditions while living in Canada. We only have Tết once a year and one life to live, right?

 

In 2024, the Year of the Dragon fell on Feb. 10 and brought symbolism associated with power and good fortune.

 

Tết is traditionally centred on the first three days starting from the eve of the New Year celebration and is marked by a seven-day national public holiday in the lunar calendar. Yet the festival could last for two to three weeks. 

 

Patrick McAllister, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Canterbury, has described Tết in his research paper as marking the transition between seasons, an occasion for family reunions, which brings mixed feelings of bittersweet hope and joy, and an opportunity to reflect on the past and prepare for the future. 

 

After celebrating Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Canadians go back to their normal lives. However, for countries that share the same Moon calendar, which dates much further back than the regular Gregorian calendar, like Vietnam, China, and Korea.

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Chelsea Nguyen, an international student from Vietnam, expresses how she tried to do fun activities related to the Tết holiday with her friends to cope with homesickness as she can’t fully celebrate it in Canada. 

 

“I made traditional food for my friends like braised pork with eggs, stuffed bitter melon soup,” said Nguyen. “Then, we spent time together to watch Tết movies back in Vietnam to remember the Tết culture.”

 

In 2023, Nguyen joined the Vietnamese International Student Association in Ottawa to preserve Vietnamese culture in the Vietnamese community and promote its traditions widely among Canadians. 

 

“I’m an international student, so the most important thing that I need to do is preserve Vietnamese tradition,” said Nguyen. “Some of them, they tend to forget that because they live here for so long, and no one celebrates Tết with them.” 

 

Therefore, VISA’s special event, “Tết Của Chúng Mình” (Our Tết), held at Carleton University on Feb. 17, was created to bring the Vietnamese community together with handmade snacks and performances. The event proved to be a success for Nguyen, as the event welcomed more than 70 participants.

 

“I want to thank you for participating in our event and always remembering our culture while living in Canada.” Said Nguyen about VISA’s event.​​​​​​​​​​

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Uyen Nhu La, an international student who arrived in Ottawa last September, said this was the first time she did celebrating Tết in Vietnam with her family. However, La and her friends tried to make their first Tết in Canada as those celebrated in Vietnam.

 

However, while finding Vietnamese ingredients in Asian markets is not a problem, La said. “The food is too expensive.” That made it hard to prepare every traditional dish. 

 

Another struggle was how to balance her schedule between celebrating traditional Tết and maintaining her studies at the same time. 

 

“While my family was celebrating Tết with each other by watching fireworks in Vietnam, I was in class studying,” said La. “It’s hard to celebrate Tết in a traditional way like in Vietnam since Lunar New Year in Canada is just a normal day.” 

 

Despite the hardships she experienced while preparing for her first Tết in Canada, La described how grateful she was for all the friendships she made, allowing La and her friends to celebrate Tết together, and create good memories. 

 

“I learned a lot of new things from my friends, and I feel very lucky to have such wonderful friends who don’t make me feel alone while celebrating the first Tết far from home,” said La.

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While Tết is celebrated widely and more significantly like a “mega-event” among Vietnamese people living in Vietnam, Vietnamese-Canadian families try to preserve Vietnamese traditions, though in a simple, less extravagant way.

 

“Me and my family and some relatives here, we just do a simple celebration like lì xì (red envelope with lucky money) and chúc Tết (exchange wishes), and have Chưng cake and stuff,” said Theodore Nguyen, the president of the Vietnamese Student Association at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, who moved to Canada when he was two years old. “We live in this environment, a very westernized environment; that’s why we stopped caring too much about the full tradition of Tết and simplified our celebration.”

 

Theodore said Tết used to be fun and more significant before COVID-19, as the Vietnamese-Canadian organization in Ottawa would organize Hội Chợ Tết (Tết Market) for the Vietnamese community to gather and celebrate Tết together. Even post-COVID, nobody took the initiative to organize Tết events that brought the community together like before. 

 

Theodore’s first goal in joining the AéVSA was to get some extracurriculars outside of academics; however, he made it a mission to use his time with the association to teach people about Vietnamese culture, as his family does not do a lot of Vietnamese traditions at home. 

 

“That’s the most accessible way to teach younger generations about Tết celebration and Tết culture and customs,” said Theodore Nguyen. 

 

“How to Train Your Lóng” is a collaborative Tết event by the Asian Canadians’ Association Ottawa and AéVSA, offering an opportunity to learn Vietnamese language and culture through red envelopes (bao lì xì), which symbolize luck, prosperity, and blessings, while fostering family bonds and cultural respect. The event also features fortune cookies, a dragon painting contest, and concludes with Vietnamese and Asian songs and karaoke.​​​​​​​​​

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“There are little ways where we try to implement Vietnamese culture in our events, but there are also bigger ways that we’ve done to promote Vietnamese culture,” said Theodore Nguyen. “For the last event, we had like 120 people. Most of them are Vietnamese, but others come from different countries to participate and learn more about Vietnamese culture.”

 

Sami To, a Vietnamese-Chinese, explains he tries to preserve Vietnamese traditions despite how he “got exposed to a lot of culture” from his childhood, moving from Vietnam to the U.S. with his family, then living in Canada alone at a young age.

 

“Ever since I moved here, I still keep the traditions going because I don’t want to lose it. I don’t want to be like… fully washed,” said To. “Me and my roommates, every year, we just like to gather together. We make a simple dinner, and then we clean the house together.”

 

In Vietnamese culture, cleaning houses before the Tết celebration symbolizes removing any ill fortune of the past year while preparing to welcome their ancestors and living visitors to renew their relationships with them. Shopping, preparing gifts, and house decorations are also important in Vietnamese culture to ensure the New Year will be full of good things. 

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Some must-have Tết tradition dishes, to pay tribute to the ancestors and for family and friends’ gatherings, depending on each region, can include Chung Cake, red sticky rice, pickled onion, which symbolize prosperity, luck, and family unity.

 

However, living in multicultural society like the U.S. and Canada has influenced To in celebrating Tết each year in a simpler way.

 

Tết in the heart of every Vietnamese person has always meant reunion, sharing joy, hope, and warmth with others. 

 

“I miss celebrating Tết in Vietnam at a certain point, but now I don’t have much family left, so I get used to being on my own,” said To. “Sometimes I think about Tết, I just like, want to be with my mom. That’s all.”