Do not let festival activities be distorted

Every spring, along with the joy of reunion and the pleasure of going out to enjoy the flavors of spring, cultural and festival activities and expressing freedom of belief are an indispensable part.

However, in recent years, along with the restoration of cultural and festival activities in many regions, there have been some worrying signs of commercialization of religious activities and festivals, which is essentially "trading in gods and saints"; taking advantage of Tet and festivals to trade, propagate superstition, and arbitrarily pray for fortune telling without scientific basis.

Photo: MH

There is a sad reality that every time Tet comes, instead of expressing their faith and belief in taking good care of the village, family affairs and burning incense for the graves of their ancestors, a large number of people are so blind that they follow shamans everywhere to the point of neglecting the worship of their ancestors right in their own homes; or some people invite shamans to call souls, hold spirit possession ceremonies, causing confusion among the people. On the other hand, when some people get sick, instead of finding a doctor and treating them scientifically, they believe in folk healers who are also shamans to diagnose and prescribe medicine in a nonsense, blind way... causing many people to "lose money but still suffer from the disease".

To limit the abuse of freedom of belief, festival activities for profit, and superstitious practices, cultural management agencies and local Party committees and authorities need to strengthen inspection and supervision, immediately report to competent authorities to assess spiritual phenomena that cause negative public opinion in order to have timely solutions to handle and prevent. In addition, cultural management agencies also need to have plans and directions for building, by praising healthy festival activities and good traditional features of the nation, suitable to the conditions of each locality.

In the long term, when conditions permitting research and collection, we will invest in a serious way to solemnly recreate the good, long-standing traditional festivals in some localities such as: the fishing ceremony, the boat-boarding ceremony of coastal people, the rice-growing festival of people in wet rice growing areas; restore folk games such as wrestling, swinging, stick fighting... to attract and guide people to these healthy folk cultural activities.

Phuong Ha