Celebrating 2023 Lunar New Year Tet at the Temple
I got to celebrate Lunar New Year at the Buddhist temple for the first time this year! Growing up Catholic and not in proximity to temples, I didn’t ever go to the temple to celebrate Tet (Vietnamese Lunar New Year). The majority of my family is buddhist or attends temple during this time, so I decided to see if Scott and I could tag along with some family members to experience this exciting, and festive time.
There are so many template throughout Orange County and beyond that will hold Tet/Lunar New Year festivities - my cousins, Scott and I went to Chua Hue Quang in Santa Ana, which seemed to be extremely popular as you can see from some of the photos. We parked a couple blocks away, and as we turned onto the main street “Westminster Ave” we were greeted with loud booms as fireworks and firecrackers were lit on the street. It was very congested on the side of street we were on, so it was a bit of a struggle to walk to the temple, but we made it and found a spot to check out the front of the temple and the fireworks being set off on the adjacent street. There was food being sold, and if you wanted to make a prayer with incense you could. After midnight, the lions started moving around the crowd, so Scott and I were able to come up to a couple of the lions and feed them dollar bills. We love being able to celebrate traditions like this together, and I hope to bring my mom next year. I even ran into my good friend Andrew, who ended up temple hopping to I believe 6 other temples that night! Anyways, wishing everyone a wonderful, and happy new year! And if you’re wondering, Lunar New Year is celebrated by many different Asian cultures - most identify this year as the Year of the Rabbit. But the Vietnamese celebrate the year of the Cat - one explanation is that because “rabbit” in Mandarin is “mao” which sounds like “meo”, the word for cat in Vietnamese. Read more about the history and celebrations for Lunar New Year here.
