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 »