Mid-Autumn Festival is also known as the Full Moon Festival, the lantern festival. It seems that nature has also made a cyclical arrangement to reserve the best and most perfect things for the Full Moon Festival. It is the roundest, brightest, most radiant and fullest Full Moon of August of all the Full Moons of the year. It is the fragrant golden custard apple hiding in itself a fairy tale with the image of the kind Tam; the golden banana bunch spread out like fingers supporting the gathering, huddled together, longing for peace. The grapefruit is a fruit that every garden has. The grapefruit segments are like the crescent moon of the days before the full moon, arranged next to each other to be full for the expected Full Moon Festival. The red persimmon is like the color of hope for the future, of many promises of birth. The custard apple with round eyes blooms with growth. The Mid-Autumn tray is the fruit of cause, the opposite of meaning, the fruit of life to remember the origin, to be grateful for the caring, pruning and cultivating hands of grandparents and parents.
Just looking at the tray of fruits, we feel more love for the daily life, fresh and pure like the breath of the wind of the fields full of alluvium, carrying the fragrance of rice straw. And from the rice grains, the pure white rice grains, sweet and fragrant, are made all kinds of moon cakes. Rice flour, smooth sticky rice flour through the skillful and diligent hands of grandmothers and mothers, with the cake filling made of green beans, lotus seeds, melon seeds... ground, creating a harmonious, fragrant, chewy, salty and sweet taste like the taste of life.
Mid-Autumn Festival is not only for children but also a joyful festival for adults, because adults are the ones who make toys and products for children. Perhaps when my grandfather whittled each bamboo strand to make star lanterns, he whittled into it all the affection, faith, love and hope for his grandchildren, with the image of a paper doctor as a love of learning, with the martial spirit through the image of lanterns pulling troops to fight the enemy, with the source of brave traditions through the image of lion dances, unicorn dances... Perhaps when my grandmother and mother molded each cake, they infused into it all the trust that nurtured the soul attached to the homeland, starting from the soft, fragrant, sweet taste to grow up, from the land and fields to mature, from the family tradition of eating and living habits; from the pure Vietnamese lullabies and language. And the Full Moon Festival is also a connection of community sharing, tolerance, kindness, filial piety, harmony in beauty, light, sparkle, and sublimation to interact with nature, with the universe, to take flight with many of one's aspirations...
After the Vu Lan ceremony to show gratitude to parents on the 15th of July is the bustling Mid-Autumn Festival for children. After the Independence Day on September 2nd of the country is the exciting Mid-Autumn Festival. It is the exchange of affection, like a continuation from the origin to the future. This Mid-Autumn Festival, we remember even more our beloved Uncle Ho - the Father of the nation, although he has passed away into the realm of "good people", but his image still lives forever with the young children, as in the poem he wrote in 1951 - the first year Uncle Ho sent a letter to the children: "The moon in the Mid-Autumn Festival is as bright as a mirror/ Uncle Ho looks at the scenery and misses the children/ Here I write a few lines/ To the children to express my longing..."
Article: Nguyen Ngoc Phu
Illustration: Document
