There are many Tets or celebrations during the year in Vietnam. However, when Vietnamese speak about Tet they generally use the word as a shorthand for Tet Nguyen Dan, the Lunar New Year. It is by far and away the most important holiday in Vietnam.

As all the guidebooks say, Tet is a mixture of Xmas, Thanksgiving and Easter. It is a time for going home to family, of renewing relationships and starting out on a new yearly cycle. Tet is not really a great time to travel in Vietnam because it is a time when everything closes down. Public servants get about 10 days off at Tet. Private sector workers save up the days off during the year and use them to visit their family.

Preparations for Tet start in the last month of the previous year. On the 23rd day of the 12th lunar month, the Kitchen God (Ong Tao) leaves the earth and heads off to report to Heaven about the family. In practice this means the kitchen alter is taken down and along with the rest of the house, cleaned up prior to Tet. Houses are either cleaned or repainted and all is set for the start of a new cycle with a clean slate.

Prior to Tet, companies throw a lot of staff parties. These are fun affairs and the employees make the most of the opportunity - a bit like Xmas work parties in the west.

Traditionally, Tet was a time for fireworks with families or local street committees or village councils organising celebrations with strings of fire crackers sounding off the New Year. However, these days, as it is in Australia, fireworks are banned and fireworks displays are organised by local authorities.

Essentially, the Lunar New Year is a spring rites festival. a bit like Easter. It signals the end of winter and the preparation of the family, the farm and the nation for a fresh beginning, a chance to set things straight for the year to come. Then during the year, people can act out in a way that is in harmony with the peculiar rhythms of that year.

The traditional flowers of Tet are the red Plum (Dao) flower in the north and the beautiful golden Apricot (Mai) flower in the south.

The Year of the Cat is said to be fortunate or lucky because of the Great Race. In the Great Race the animals had to race across a river to decide the order of the years. During race across the river the Cat and the Rat rode on the back of the Water Buffalo (another animal unique to the Vietnamese Zodiac). When they arrived on the other side the Rat pushed the Cat into the water and jumped onto the bank first. The Buffalo made it second and the powerful Tiger came third. The Cat was startled by being pushed into the water but surprisingly, it found out it could swim. How lucky! So it was the fourth animal across.