Tet in the past and at the present

On a childhood day, about a month before Tet, everyone was excited shopping to prepare for Tet, my mother took me to buy clothes, father had the responsibility of fixing and refurbishing items in the house. The items in the house were wiped very clean, the wall was stuck with parallel sentences, calligraphy pictures to hope that the family had a peaceful and prosperous year.

In the days before Tet, we easily met the image of peach blossom, apricot blossom, kumquat tree, blooming flowers as they would like to share the Tet atmosphere that was full of streets. In the North, people often arranged the branch of peach blossom which bloomed gorgeously, in the South, we met yellow apricot blossoms images to splendid in the spring sunshine with some Bonsai pots neatly cut and some daises pots blooming as spring sunshine signed a peaceful year upcoming.

In the past, people rushed and jostled amidst the bustling crowd in the market to buy delicious food, a few sticky, a few beans, a few meat to cook Vietnamese square sticky rice cake and Vietnamese cylindrical sticky rice cake. On New Year’s Eve morning, the whole family woke up early to a package of cake and gathered together to cook the cake until New Year’s Eve time after a busy day.

In the past, everyone stuck parallel sentences in front of the door of their house, decorated apricot blossoms so splendidly, built the New Year tree, firecrackers to hope for a year peacefully, luckily and successfully.

Nowadays, everyone laments that because of the bustled lifestyle and under heavy pressure, we can’t feel the Tet atmosphere as in the past, but fewer people know that the Tet atmosphere not only expresses outside but also exists inside each of us.

Is it true that the atmosphere of Tet is homesickness and impatient to look forward to coming back hometown to meet family?

Or is Tet a reunion meal together with family and discuss a new year, although it is just a simple meal, we still feel linger?

Or is Tet a period that we feel restless to remember a childhood happily when our mother took us to buy clothes to prepare for Tet?

Or is Tet a time that we feel too tired because of under heavy pressure of life when we have to worry about many things and hope to return to the warm family’s arms?

Does the Tet holiday also come from the interiority of us? If our hearts feel that Tet is coming nearly, around us will be full of atmosphere. Or if you hope Tet comes so that you can travel to run away the “opportunity” to come back to your hometown, eat a New Year’s Eve meal and return to your family’s home, then even if you live in a social with full of Tet atmosphere and people are frolic around the street, you also never feel the atmosphere of Tet.

Actually, the Tet atmosphere isn’t lost in our hearts, it just depends on the way you accept it…