Lunar New Year Festival (Tết Nguyên đán, Tết cả, Tết ta, Tết âm lịch in Vietnamese) is the first festival to open a lunar new year. The festival lasts from the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month of the previous year to the 7th of the first lunar month in the New Year. The festival is characterized with many solemn rituals and ceremonies at the royal court and among the common people. During this time, all activities are temporarily stopped for the sake of ancestral worship, relaxation, family reunions and visits, and good-luck wishes and congratulations.
During the Lunar New Year Festival, a number of ceremonies are held in order to show off the royal court’s solemnity and authority. Under the Lê-Nguyễn dynasties (15th-19th centuries), before the festival, there were such rituals as the gods of kitchen worship, the calendar issuing ceremony, the procession of the earthen spring buffalo and the Herder-god (lễ tiến xuân ngưu), the ceremony of cleaning and storing royal seals (lễ phất thức), the ceremony to invite late emperors for the festival (lễ cáp hưởng), and the ritual of raising the New Year pole (lễ thướng tiêu). Other ceremonies which took place during and after the festival include: the ritual held at the New Year’s Eve (lễ trừ tịch), the ancestral ceremony, the ceremony to wish the King longevityand the King grants his courtiers with money and banquet, the Heaven-worshipping ceremony (lễ tế giao), the ceremonial spring sightseeing, the ceremony of lowering the New Year pole (lễ khai hạ), and the royal seal-opening ritual (lễ khai ấn).
Annually, on the Lichun day (start of spring, or Lập xuân in Vietnamese), the Royal Court performed the procession of the spring buffalo (xuân ngưu). Before that, the Ministry of Public Work had made a big earthen buffalo, a huge herder-god (thần Câu mang) and 1.215 smaller buffaloes and herder-gods. Câu mang is the god of spring, in the figure of a buffalo-boy holding a willow whip. The god is 3 thước 6 tấc 5 phân* high (symbolizing 365 days) and his whip is 2 thước 4 tấc long (symbolizing 24 solar terms in a year). The xuân ngưu, aka the earthen spring buffalo, is 4 thước in height (symbolizingfour seasons) and 8 thước in length (symbolizing the beginning of four seasons, the equinoxes and the solstices, its tail is 1 thước 2 tấc long (symbolizing 12 months). The Herder-gods and the spring buffaloes are painted in colours of five basic elements (ngũ hành). On the ceremonial day, the Royal Court hosted the ritual in honour of the god of spring, donating the spring buffaloes to the king who would then grant these buffaloes to his courtiers and royal temples within the Thăng Long imperial capital. * Thước, tấc, phân are ancient units of measurement used in Viet Nam. A thước is equivalent to 40cm, a tấc: 4cm, and a phân: 4mm.
As usual, the ceremonial platform was set up in Đông Hà Ward in the east of the Thăng Long imperial citadel, corresponding to the ancient direction of spring. In the afternoon before the beginning day of spring, the Câu mang God and spring buffaloes were solemnly brought to the ceremonial platform. At midnight, the Governor of Phụng Thiên Prefecture, accompanied by two military commandersof the districts Thọ Xương and Quảng Đức and residents from commercial wards, would carry the God and buffaloes to Bạch Mã Temple. There, the buffaloes were left outside while the God was placed in the middle of the front hall. About 4-5 AM, mandarins would observe the rituals. The votive offerings for this ceremony included a pig, a jar of liquour, a tray of glutinous rice, betel and areca nuts, incenses, candles and the like. After the ritual, the God was wrapped in a mat and buried at a clean land plot selected by the Royal Court’s geomancer.