Keeping Tet alive far from home

Where we live in the U.S., there is no sacred hush of New Year's Eve, little celebration and few greetings. Tet is almost absent from public space. Without a deliberate effort to call it back, it can slip past quietly and leave no trace.

For children born and raised overseas, already immersed in local rhythms and holidays, that absence slowly creates an invisible distance between them and the values tied to their parents' families and homeland.

Researchers often describe this condition as "double marginalization." It is the suspended feeling many migrant children face when they grow up without spaces or practices connected to their family’s cultural heritage. In that situation, they are no longer fully Vietnamese in their parents’ cultural memory, yet they are rarely seen as wholly native in the place where they were born. In this in-between state, the search for identity can become a long and quiet loneliness.

Because of these concerns, I came to see that keeping Tet is no longer a personal preference but an educational choice. Parents have to patiently reconstruct a modest space for cultural practice, where children do not just receive traditions but begin to take part in preserving them.

Every year, despite busy schedules, we still set aside time to prepare for Tet with our child. In a foreign country, finding fresh dong leaves and a square mold for making banh chung or even a small peach blossom branch is not easy. Those difficulties help children understand that Tet does not simply appear and that their parents' efforts are not automatic.

We walk through Asian markets together and show our child how to choose each item. We explain to them the meaning of banh chung. Back home, we arrange the fruit tray and decorate a small corner for Tet. Through these activities, stories of our own Tet memories unfold naturally and slowly. They allow a child to sense that practicing Tet also means passing on a cultural legacy from one generation to the next.

Mina (R), a Vietnamese Italian, learns to make sticky rice cake banh chung for Tet with her Vietnamese grandmother at their home in Italy, 2021. Photo by Huyen Maasai

The Tet we describe appears in fragments: a thin curl of kitchen smoke drifting along the porch on a late December afternoon, the offering to send off the Kitchen Gods, the dense scent of incense, the pot of coriander water for a final bath on the last day of the year, and the faint aroma of dong leaves as spring approaches. We do not tell these stories to recreate a Tet that has already passed. We know we cannot bring the essence of Tet back home into a small kitchen abroad. We can only help our child feel that in the place where their parents were born, there is one time each year when people slow down and return to what is simple and true in themselves. That season is called Tet.

Through these quiet efforts, Tet moves from public space into private life, into the family kitchen, into stories and into the patience adults give their children.

The biggest difference between Tet in Vietnam and Tet abroad lies in how much initiative people must take. At home, Tet surrounds everyone and collective life has already shaped it. It flows through streets washed in red, through shared holidays and through the synchronized rhythm of society. Yet that very fullness can dull anticipation. When tradition runs on social momentum, people become beneficiaries rather than makers. As a result, some complain that Tet feels flat and call for it to be simplified or even merged with the Gregorian New Year to avoid disruption.

Abroad, Tet exists only when people choose it. If parents grow careless, Tet disappears. If no one tells the stories, children never learn them. The effort required to keep Tet turns it into a heritage passed down through dialogue and reflection.

These children may never experience a Tet exactly like the one their parents knew. But if they grow up aware that they are connected to their parents’ homeland, to family memory and to a Vietnamese community that celebrates Tet, then the values of their roots remain quiet but enduring.

In an era often called a flat world, global uniformity in lifestyles and values brings convenience, yet it also risks spiritual monotony. When everything begins to look alike, cultural identity becomes a personal asset. In that context, keeping Tet, or more broadly safeguarding cultural heritage, equips children with a distinct cultural code. That code allows them to step into the world with confidence without dissolving into the surrounding crowd.

In truth, the story of keeping Tet is not only for Vietnamese living abroad. Even at home, as society shifts rapidly, traditional values face erosion. Industrial rhythms sweep away old habits and convenient services replace practices that once bound families together. Tet within Vietnam also needs people who actively build bridges. Cultural identity has never been a fixed constant that people inherit by default. It is a living entity that exists and grows only when people sustain it with awareness.

There are countless roads in life, but only one road leads back to home. That road does not have to be geographical. It can be an inner path shaped by memory, by stories and by values passed down across generations.

*Le Thanh Tung is a Vietnamese lecturer, sociologist, author and book translator living in the U.S.