Trung Thu Vietnam
Mid-Autumn Festival - Children's Festival
Every year, the full moon of lunar August is when the weather is cool, the crops are waiting to be harvested, so people celebrate a festival to pray for the harvest, sing and have fun. The family celebrates the feast of the ancestors during the day, and at night presents the moon meal. The top of the feast is moon cake, and theyuse many kinds of fruit cakes, dyed in all bright colors, blue, red, white, and yellow.
Mid-Autumn Festival is an opportunity for adults to leisurely sip a cup of tea, enjoy moon cakes, and predict the nation's destiny. But the most fun is still the children. For children, this is a holiday that is more fun than the annual Lunar New Year, when children are given toys, baked cakes, sticky rice cakes, star lanterns, and lion dances by adults., etc. Groups of children often gather together to perform lion one week before the festival, even a month, they go to the houses in the village to ask for fruit cakes, lucky money to buy ice cream, milk cans, etc.
On the full moon night of August, children gather to enjoythe feast and play folk games, some dance on the tiles, some pull tug of war, some people participate in the lantern parade, of lions, drums, mules, etc. on the streets with cheers, rumbling laughters, etc. Therefore, the Mid-Autumn Festival was originally a New Year for adults to enjoy the natural beauty, eat cakes, and drink tea to watch the full moon to predict crops and national destiny. Gradually, the Mid-Autumn Festival became a Children's Festival with exciting and jubilant games throughout the village, but adults also participated in it.
Children always look forward to the dinner tray to watch the moon in the evening. A huge tray of fruits such as bananas, custard-apples,grapefruits, pomegranates, etc., along with sticky rice cakes, will be decorated very eye-catchingly with star lanterns, fish lanterns, etc. After playing folk games and perform lion dance, the childrenwill be allowed to jointhe feast. Children's joy is ripe yellow bananas, red persimmons which bring hope, custard apples bring the wish to proliferate, grapefruits bring good things, pomegranates contain goodluck.
Mid-Autumn Festival can be said to be the most leisurely holidayof Vietnamese people, in the mild weather of autumn, children have fun while adults enjoy drinks leisurely. Of course, traditional activities will also have to change to gradually adapt to the development trend, but the full moon in August will still be a holiday that is cherished and handed down from generation to generation.