Tết

Tết (Vietnamese: [tet̚˧˦], chữ Hán: 節), short for Tết Nguyên Đán ( chữ Hán: 節元旦; lit. 'Feast of the first day'), is the most important celebration in Vietnamese culture. Tết celebrates the arrival of spring, which is on the first day of the first Vietnamese lunisolar month, and usually falls between late January and 20 February in the Gregorian calendar.

Tết Nguyên Đán is not to be confused with Tết Trung Thu (Mid–Autumn Festival). "Tết" itself only means "festival", but it would generally refer to the Lunar New Year in Vietnamese, as it is often seen as the most important festival amongst the Vietnamese and the Vietnamese diaspora, with Tết Trung Thu regarded as the second-most important.

Vietnamese people celebrate Tết annually, which is based on a lunisolar calendar that calculates both the motions of Earth around the Sun and of the Moon around Earth. Tết is generally celebrated on the same day as Chinese New Year (also called Spring Festival), with a one-hour time difference between Vietnam and China resulting in the new moon occurring on different days. The dates of the Vietnamese and Chinese Lunar New Year occasionally differ, such as in 1985, when Vietnam celebrated Lunar New Year a month before China. It takes place from the first day of the first month of the Vietnamese lunar calendar (around late January or early February) until at least the third day.

Tết is also an occasion for pilgrimages and family reunions. Celebrants set aside the trouble of the past year and hope for a better and happier upcoming new year. This festival can also be referred to as Hội xuân in vernacular Vietnamese, (from lễ hội, "festival", and mùa xuân, "spring").