‘Day of thanksgiving’
Festival celebrates Vietnamese New Year with music, food, lion dance
Be a part of the Vietnamese community’s largest celebration during the Vietnamese New Year Festival.
Ky Dinn, president of the Vietnamese Community of New Mexico, has been putting on the festival since 1976. The festival celebrates the Lunar New Year that is commemorated by Vietnamese worldwide. This year’s festival will be held on Sunday, Jan. 19, in the gym behind Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Southeast Albuquerque.
“For the new year, for us it’s a day of thanksgiving for sure,” Dinn said. “We give thanks to the God or the Buddha or the ancestors for giving us a very blessed year last year, and (it’s) a time for renewal, so we try to see how we can do anything better for the new year. (It’s) a time for connection, so we go to (visit) friends or we invite them to our house. We get together with family members. And the workforce, at the office, the boss treats the workers with something of appreciation for what they have done for the company or for the business.”
Vietnamese New Year is also a time to connect with ancestors and the deceased.
“That’s why this day of the New Year we all go to the tombstone, the graves of the loved one, and we clean everything around the grave and person’s tombstone and put flowers on the grave,” Dinn said. “So that’s a connection between the living and the dead, something very spiritual and very sacred.”
Vietnamese New Year Festival attendees will get to learn more about the holiday’s traditions at the event. Guests also will get to enjoy a festive lion dance performance, as well as Vietnamese music and a prize raffle. Vietnamese food will be available for purchase. Proceeds help support the event. The vibrant and dynamic lion dance is believed to bring good luck, chase away bad luck and bring good fortune.
“They are very dynamic, and children, especially, and everybody have a custom to give lucky money to lions, one or two bucks, five bucks, four bucks, whatever you can do,” Dinn said. “You can show them, and they will grab it from your hands and swallow it. They imitate the movement of the lions, like they are scratching their back, they lie down, they’re sleeping, they jump. It’s really fun.”
Dinn encourages everyone from all backgrounds to attend the celebration and forget their worries. The celebration is a time to relax, reflect and look to the future to live a better life.
“Go there for the festive mood for the moment,” he said. “Forget everything and the headaches of life.”
Dinn, who was born and raised in Vietnam, began the festival shortly after escaping to the United States in 1975. He said he is fortunate to be alive and survive a tumultuous time.
“I fought in the war, and I escaped, and I am lucky enough to be alive up to now and be an old man, so I am a lucky guy,” he said. “I escaped the last day of Vietnam, when the South collapsed, so I fled on the last day.”