My Child's Lantern Festival, or a Disaster Essay

(Baonghean) -"The Lunar New Year holidays have passed, I happily went to school, back to the tests that were more difficult than the exercises in the advanced books and the first minutes of class were more exciting than last night's soccer match. The end of Tet was really sad, but it was okay, because my mother said that the full moon of January was coming, the Lantern Festival. I don't know what the Lantern Festival is, but it's very grand, my mother said "Offering all year is not as good as the full moon of January". When I asked why my mother didn't save the whole year for the full moon of January to offer at once, my mother scolded me for talking nonsense like a child and told me to go somewhere else to play so she could prepare for the full moon ceremony. The day I asked, it was only the 5th but my mother was already in a hurry.

Tet Nguyen Tieu is like Vietnamese Women's Day or International Women's Day, mothers are given priority to go to work late and leave work early. The other day I heard my mother talking on the phone with her roommate like this:

- I've already calculated everything, that day, you and I went to the market early to buy offerings, at 8 o'clock we returned to the office to check in and then we continued. The department head would definitely go to the market to buy offerings, her husband's family is extremely spiritual, they worship and pay respects very meticulously. After buying everything, we'll return to the office a little late, it's okay. In the afternoon, I'll also consider the situation to come back early, and to be honest, all the women in the office are like that, not just me!

Even on this day, men buy flowers for their wives, but they don't buy roses like on October 20 or March 8, but buy chrysanthemums, maybe because their mothers like it or because it's a custom on this day, because last year my father forgot to buy chrysanthemums so my mother nagged him, "You forgot to bring just a bunch of flowers to offer."

My grandmother also loves Tet Nguyen Tieu, every year she wraps a scarf and wears a velvet dress to go to the pagoda to play, I wanted to go with her but after going just once I was scared to death. Oh my god, where did all these people come from! People jostled and pushed each other to ask for fortunes, to ask for fortunes and to ask about all kinds of things in life: love affairs, money, health, studies, and probably what the weather would be like tomorrow. I wanted to ask if I would be an excellent student at the end of the year, but I was too young to squeeze in with the adults, what a pity. After that, I followed my grandmother to burn incense, to offer prayers to the stars to ward off bad luck, the smoke of the incense made my eyes sting and my breath hit, I thought people must have burned a lot of incense so that the bad luck stars and the bad luck stars would be suffocated and have to run far away, it was really profound. Going to the pagoda on this day is also an opportunity to raise funds to help people in difficult circumstances, every year when I came back I saw that my grandmother's bracelets and necklaces had gone somewhere, when I asked her, she said they were offered to thieves and hooligans. My grandmother is truly a person of immense compassion and this is also a cultural beauty of the Full Moon Festival in January.

I almost forgot, the Full Moon Festival in January is also a festival to encourage learning. According to ancient legend, on this day the king invited the top scholars in the court to the royal garden to discuss literature and poetry. Nowadays, people do not discuss literature and poetry but come to listen to monks read sutras and memorials. To show their desire to learn, people bring newspapers, whether to read or to sit on, I don't know, but after the ceremony to dispel bad luck, newspapers are always spread all over the yard, white and beautiful. That further proves our civilization and love of learning...".

Reading this far, my husband and I burst out laughing at our son’s silly essay. But then we fell silent, quietly looking at each other, each with a different thought. Are we children being silly and ignorant, or are we adults being ridiculous and lacking awareness, turning a beautiful tradition into a joke in the eyes of children? Is there still a Lantern Festival with its pure and elegant banh troi and banh chay in the cold of the North, or a full moon night filled with a sky of lanterns and floating lanterns on the river in cities influenced by Chinese culture in the South? How sad it is that today’s children only know a somewhat distorted and faded image of the Lantern Festival, all because of the hustle and bustle, superficiality, and lack of awareness of adults.

My son's essay got a bad grade from the teacher, but what can I do? Maybe the teacher graded it in a hurry so that she could leave school early and go to the market to buy gifts, or maybe she was upset because her husband forgot to buy chrysanthemums as a gift?

Hai Trieu (Email from Paris)