The New Year's Eve ceremony is also known as the New Year's Eve ceremony, which means to get rid of evil spirits, bad luck, and misfortunes of the old year to prepare for a better new year.
According to ancient beliefs, every year there is a god who oversees human affairs. At the end of the year, this god hands over to his successor. Therefore, families perform ceremonies to see off the old god and to predict the arrival of the new god.
What is needed for the New Year's Eve offering tray for the Year of the Dragon 2024?
According to ancient Vietnamese customs, to celebrate New Year's Eve, families often prepare two trays of offerings to place in two places: the family altar and outside (at the main door) to worship the gods.
Outdoor New Year's Eve offerings
The outdoor New Year's Eve ceremony is to send off the old year's god (the god responsible for taking care of the people and governing the lower world in the old year) and welcome the new year's god (the god of the new year). There are 12 god-in-charges who take turns in 12 years.
The New Year's Eve offering tray for the Year of the Dragon 2024 can be a savory or vegetarian offering; depending on the conditions and traditions of each family, it is prepared differently, but must include betel and areca nuts, fruits, a cup of water or wine.
Salty dishes usually have:
- Lucky Rooster
- Chung cake
- Gac sticky rice
- Ham
- Fruit plate
- Rice plate, salt plate
- Wine, water
- Flower
- Lamp (candle)
- Incense (3 - 5 sticks)
- Betel and areca nut
Vegetarian dishes usually have:
- Soft drink can
- Confectionery
- Sticky rice
- Flower
- Fruit plate
- Lamp/candle
- Betel and areca nut
- Incense (3 - 5 sticks)
- Wine, water
- Salt plate, rice plate.
In addition, in the New Year's Eve offering tray, the homeowner can also prepare votive paper money and the hat of the mandarin.
What is needed for the New Year's Eve offering tray for the Year of the Dragon 2024?
New Year's Eve offerings in the house
Offering New Year's Eve at home is a ceremony to worship Tho Cong, the guardian deity of the house, and ancestors. The New Year's Eve offering tray at home is equally important to pray for the family to be healthy and have many good things in the new year.
The New Year's Eve offering tray in the house is usually prepared more fully and depending on the region, there are different dishes.
Northern Vietnamese feasts are usually calculated by the number of bowls and plates, including 4 bowls and 4 plates, if the feast is large then 6 bowls and 6 plates or 8 bowls and 8 plates. The bowls include stewed pig's feet with bamboo shoots, mixed pork skin and pork meatballs, meatball soup, vermicelli with chicken gizzards. The plates usually include sticky rice, banh chung, boiled meat, braised meat, pork roll, fried pork roll, salad and pickled onions.
Northern New Year's Eve offerings
The Central Vietnamese feast usually has pickled vegetables, pork roll, jellied meat, chicken with Vietnamese coriander, boiled pork, a bowl of stewed dried bamboo shoots, a bowl of vermicelli, fried fish or spring rolls.
The New Year's Eve offerings in the South are simpler. Because the weather in the South is often hot, the offerings often prioritize cold dishes such as bitter melon soup stuffed with meat, bamboo shoot soup, braised pork with duck eggs, spring rolls, pickled onions, banh tet...
Note, for boiled chicken, the homeowner needs to choose a rooster that has just started to crow, has not mated with a hen, is healthy, has a yellow beak, comb, and yellow legs.
Southern New Year's Eve offerings
New Year's Eve offering indoors or outdoors first?
According to Vietnamese belief, there are 12 governors and 12 judges (gods who assist the governors), each year there is a governor in charge of ruling the lower world.
At the moment of New Year's Eve, the mandarins hand over the year's governing work to each other. At that time, they are on an inspection tour of the lower world, and are in such a hurry that they do not have time to go inside the house, so the New Year's Eve ceremony is usually held outdoors, near the main door of each house.
The homeowner must perform the New Year's Eve ceremony outdoors first to "welcome the new and see off the old", that is, to welcome the new governor and see off the old governor, then perform the New Year's Eve ceremony indoors.
However, nowadays, many families live in apartments, due to limited space, so the worship only needs to be concentrated indoors and does not necessarily have to be done outdoors. If families need to worship New Year's Eve outdoors, they should go down to the apartment yard. Outdoor worship requires space with sky and earth, so the offerings need to be placed close to the ground. If worshiping on the balcony of the apartment building, the space for displaying offerings is too far from the ground, so it is not suitable.
TH (according to VTC News)