Mooncake is a kind of rich pastry typically filled with mashed beans, salted egg yolk, lotus seed paste, salty paste with meat, lemon leaves or many other pastes nowadays. It is a dispensable delicacy for this festival only, thus foreigners can hardly see this type of cake at other times in the year. Like other Asian countries celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival, the typical festive food on that date in Vietnam is mooncake. Vietnamese parents will buy several items for their kids as well as décor-stuff such as colourful lanterns, especially traditional star-shaped lantern, toys, and funny masks to be ready for a festive date. Markets or vendors purchasing Mid-Autumn Festival kinds of stuff are getting busy about half to a month before the main date. How do Vietnamese celebrate the Mid Autumn Festival? This festival is a great event to teach the children about the tradition, close-knit family relationship, kindness and sharing, solidarity, and respect to their seniors as well as ancestors. Like traditional worship, the Mid-Autumn Festival in Vietnam is also about praying good things for everyone in the family such as success, health, longevity, and a good future. And due to this special date, people have a chance to come back home together, and they would like to express their thankfulness for the family unions as well. People will gather, enjoy the feast, cheerfully share about their own lives and admire the bright moonlight together.Īfter finishing the fruitful crop, people want to give thanks to their ancestors for the harvest.
It is also said that the roundest and brightest Full Moon in the year on this day stands for the completion as well as family assemblies. If Lunar New Year is a long holiday which helps members in the family gather after an entire year far away from home, Mid-Autumn Festival is a short union that keeps close-knit relationship amongst members in the family. Thus, any Vietnamese kid always looks forward to this festival whenever the 8th Month in Lunar Calendar comes. Hence they took advantage of this date to create happiness for the children by buying lanterns, colourful masks, celebrating a traditional feast and letting their kids enjoy the lantern parade under the bright Full Moon. Coincidentally, the middle of the 8th Month in Lunar Calender is when the full moon is biggest in the year. After finishing the main work, they want to make up for this by spending a special date as a meaningful present for the children. It is celebrated after the summer harvest time by parents because they didn’t have time to take care of their kids thoroughly during harvesting. As its name in Vietnam, Children’s Festival, from a familiar lunar date that people mostly prepare for worship, this date is the emphasis on the celebration of children as a very special gift for them. Not only as a valuable tradition well-maintained throughout generations, but this festival is also a meaningful event to consolidate family interconnection by these following purposes: *** Special gift for children:Īlthough there are many fundamental concepts celebrated in the Mid-Autumn Festival, in Vietnam, this is the time for the children. Mid-Autumn Festival plays an essential role in Vietnamese people’s spiritual lives. What is the Mid Autumn Festival's meaning in Vietnam? On this special day, all the members of the family gather and prepare various sweets, fruit and they also prepare colourful lanterns and wear many funny masks. It is also the time that annual summer harvest time ends up, thus people call it as an East Asian harvest festival.
Mid-Autumn Festival, like its name, is celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month in the lunar calendar, which falls into the middle of Autumn, corresponding to mid-September to early October in the Western Calendar with a full moon at night. When is the Mid Autumn Festival held in Vietnam? The festival has gained popularity during centuries and is well-maintained until now. It is said that this festival originated in the Red River Delta's Rice Civilization thousands of years ago.
Like many other Asian countries, the Mid-Autumn Festival in Vietnam is also a traditional event to celebrate the biggest full-moon in the year, which follows the Lunar Calendar (Moon Calendar).
What is the Mid Autumn Festival in Vietnam? If you’re planning a trip to Vietnam with the kids in the Autumn, this colourful festival will be a remarkable experience during your trip. Standing for Vietnam’s cultural beauty, the Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the outstanding activities in many Vietnam Family Tours. Besides Lunar New Year Eve, the biggest holiday in the year, Mid-Autumn Festival (Tet Trung Thu in Vietnamese) is the second notable traditional celebration in Vietnam.