Written by: Helen Coutant

Winter has come to Stonevale. The woodshed is piled high with firewood; the garden is battened down against a bitter wind that sweeps up the valley, bringing ice and snow. The fields seem to stretch father than they do in summer, now that they are a uniform gray. The corn stubble crunches underfoot and the earth are hard enough to wound my hand. In this unlikely spot, and at this, the coldest time of the year, my Vietnamese husband, our children, and I, an American woman, will celebrate Tết.

Tết is the most important event of the year in Vietnam. It corresponds with our New Year’s, and yet it is more like Christmas, Easter and the Fourth of July rolled into one…. For Vietnamese, it means both the beginning of a lunar year and of spring. Most of all, it is a time to be home with one’s family, whatever the cost, and a time to pay one’s respects to the ancestors. To be away from one’s parents, brothers, and sisters, aunts and uncles at Tết – what desolation!

You will be right in wondering what Tết can mean to an American who has never been to Vietnam. And you will be amused to know that I associate it with snow and ice, with bleak skies and sunlight of the most forlorn yellow, instead of with tropical warmth, flowering plums and green branches. And yet, since Tết entered my life, I have never celebrated an American New Year, except in the most perfunctory way. Tết has become my “New Year’s”.

Tết begins for me some morning in mid-January when my husband rushes in the door, his face and hands red from the cold, carrying three of four cherry branches he has cut in a neighboring orchard. The branches are placed in a bucket in a sunny room. We watch them lovingly, nurturing the cautious unfolding of buds. Our patience is rewarded at last when, among the green buds, there are one or two pink ones. These will be the flowers. Even one blossom will be enough for us, a treasure, a feast for the eyes. These branches, ripened and expressing our longing for spring, will be placed on the altar of the ancestors.

In a Vietnamese home, the altar occupies the most prominent spot. It is the focus of all activities at Tết. Here the family welcomes the ancestors and pays homage to them. If one is from Huế, as my husband is, there will be a vase of yellow plum blossoms on the altar. But these are impossible to obtain in North America, so we substitute cherry.

Usually a week before Tết, on a Saturday morning, I’ll find that my husband has taken everything off our altar. The large brass candlesticks, the crooked brass incense burner, left in the streets of Huế during the 1968 Tết offensive and given to my husband by his parents when he returned briefly in 1974, the cooper bowl holding the amber prayer beads – all these must be polished until they gleam. Then two new red candles are placed in the holders. The blue Chinese bowl which contains the burnt incense sticks in grains of rice must be emptied and new rice put in. And last year’s cherry branch which has been on the altar all year, decorated with small paper blossoms and leaves to replace the withered one, is removed, and our new branch is put in its place.

Next my husband brings two red paper banners down from his studio. On these are written, in his own calligraphy, matching verses by a Vietnamese Zen master who is also one of his dearest friends. Each year I learn the words again:

Spring comes again, in a foreign land-

Still unable to see the yellow plum blossoms.

The Vietnamese bird is sorrowful.

As my heart goes back to my old village,

All I can watch is the falling snow,

And I dream of the Southern branches.

(Xuân đáo tha hương, bất kiến hoàng mai sầu Việt điểu. Tâm hoài cổ quận, thường chiêm bạch tuyết mộng Nam chi.)

Finally, the day before Tết, or Tết’s Eve, arrives. We congregate in the kitchen where a duck is thawing on the counter; behind it are several jars of dưa món, a special kind of pickle which we have labored to make. In the refrigerator is the thịt đông, a kind of Vietnamese head cheese. All night, pots of sweet rice and mung beans without their skins have been soaking. Great slabs of pork are marinating in nước mắm (or fish sauce) and crushed onions and black pepper. I pull the two wooden bánh chưng frames my husband made from a drawer, and my daughters and I set to work. We will make twenty to twenty-five bánh chưng; these are like square cakes made of sweet rice, yellow beans and pork. Each cake is wrapped in bamboo leaves, tin foil and then Saran wrap, for it must stay dry during twelve hours of boiling. As we work together, filling, wrapping, tying these small square cakes, I think of the Vietnamese women who patiently, and with great good humor, taught me how to make these special Tết dishes. To them I owe so much of my love for Tết; for it is they, as well as my husband, who made me a participant.

We count the finished bánh chưng before we drop them into a huge pot to boil. There are plenty to share with friends, plenty so that we can enjoy them daily during the first week of Tết. I will even hide a few in the freezer to be opened and appreciated in March or April.

Darkness falls early, for after all it is mid-winter. Now, this evening before Tết, a serious and somber mood pervades the house. The brass candlesticks, the incense burners, shine on the altar. Our few cherry blossoms gleam like tiny fallen stars. The duck, roasted ad cooling on a rack, has been cut. One bánh chưng is opened. Two pairs of red chopsticks and two red bowls are placed on two dishes for the ancestors. Next we fill the trays with our offerings of Tết dishes for the ancestors: thịt đông, roast duck, dưa món, bánh chưng. For Vietnamese, this is the time to pray to the ancestors. For me, it is a time for prayer also, and of lovely silence. Our small room is soon filled with the fragrance of incense. I imagine the fragrant smoke wandering outside through a crack in the door; I imagine it filling our garden so that our Vietnamese ancestors will know that this is the place where they are to come, to this bare mountainside in northern Maryland. The bell which hangs from a mimosa tree in our front yard rings once, twice. It could be a benediction, a greeting. We stand, heads bowed, each waiting to light a stick of incense and pray. For a few minutes we exist outside the boundaries of time and space. We know we are a link in a long chain stretching behind and ahead of us. Eternity exists here and now. I watch my youngest daughter pray. She holds the incense stick tightly between her two hands. Her prayer last a long time. After this, we sit quietly until the very last stick of incense has burned down.

On the morning of Tết, my husband puts on his coat and goes outside before breakfast. He knocks on our door so that he can be our first “visitor”. For Vietnamese, it is important that the first visitor during Tết be an esteemed friend. Out here, in the middle of the country, it’s hard to tell who might come knocking at our door, and my husband doesn’t want to trust to luck. Once our “visitor” has entered, we light incense again and pray. Then, at last, we taste our first bánh chưng. Some time before noon, our children line up for their red envelopes. It is a Vietnamese custom to give children envelopes with a small amount of money on the first day of the new year.

After the excitement, I join my husband where he has gone to stand at the window. I know that he is thinking of his family in Vietnam, of his old parents, his brothers and sisters, his childhood home. Looking out at our garden, does he see another world of ancient customs, gentility, devotion and prayer? In that world, is a light rain falling on trees which are already green; does the smell of incense rise in thick clouds and pass from house to house like a silent invocation; does he hear his mother chanting the sutras, and his father’s deep voice calling him? I put my hand on his arm and he looks down at me.

Every year Tết comes and goes, in the manner of all holidays. And yet it is with us far beyond its designated week in mid-winter. In spring, in summer, in fall, when a very light drizzle is falling and it is about 50 degrees, my husband will stand by a window, lost in thought. I know what he is thinking – this is a day like the days of Tết in Vietnam, in Huế, where he grew up. For as long as we have been married, for as long as we have been married, for as long as my husband has been away from home, he has never had a Tết like this, a Tết with a soft rain, more like a must, a Tết with extended family, with the voices of children playing Vietnamese games. And yet, I believe, we believe, that surely some day, some day again, he will.

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From: The Vietnam Forum, a Review of Vietnamese culture, 1984: 3, Yale University Southeast Asia Studies

Helen Coutant, whose full name is Helen Coutant Webb, was born in Washington, D.C. After graduating from the University of California, she received a Master’s degree in Education from Columbia University. Her first book, First Snow, was the winner of the 1975 Christopher Award. She was married to the Vietnamese writer-artist Võ Đình and they lived at the foot of South Mountain in Western Maryland.

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I found it on Az Republic Newspaper, and I like it, try it and enjoy!