Happy New Year! Chúc mừng năm mới! A week ago, I made an offering to the Kitchen God on my stove top. The ritual is typically performed on the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month, a week before new year’s eve according to the traditional lunar calendar. I cleaned the stove, placed three apples […]
SENDING OFF THE KITCHEN GOD (Part 1) Read More »
I originally meant to post this on Christmas Day 2025, but my blog ran into some technical problems that took some time to resolve. What was Christmas like in the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, or South Vietnam)? Two years ago, I briefly mentioned my mother’s memories of Christmas celebrations in Saigon in the early 1970s.
CHRISTMAS IN NGÔ ĐÌNH DIỆM’S REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM Read More »
Happy New Year! Chúc mừng năm mới! Another year, another holiday song… Phạm Đình Chương’s “A Celebratory Glass of Wine” was one of my favorite holiday songs for the Lunar New Year when I was a kid. It was the last song on Tiếng Tơ Đồng Xuân (The Silken Strings of Spring), a Tết album
A ghost from Christmas past! That was my first thought upon laying eyes on the document. I was visiting Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, and I happened on a memo that recounted a dramatic confrontation at the Hanoi cathdral, North Vietnam, on Christmas Eve over sixty years ago. Let me back up a little
A GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST FROM HANOI, 1958 Read More »
Happy New Year! Chúc mừng năm mới! One of the holiday songs I remember my family listening to at Tết when I was a teenager was Phạm Đình Chương’s “Springtime in Exile” (“Xuân tha hương,” 1956). Tết, or the lunar new year, is the most important holiday of the year for most ethnic Vietnamese, regardless
“Vietnamese people love Christmas!” That’s what I usually say when someone asks me whether I celebrate the holiday, and I try to explain why I am both a lifelong Buddhist and a Christmas enthusiast. But the real answer is a little more complicated. I was a baby when my family came to the US as
WHAT DOES CHRISTMAS MEAN TO A VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST REFUGEE? Read More »