In Vietnam, Tęt-Trung-Thu or Trung Thu or the Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the most popular family holidays. It is held on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month.

Vietnamese families plan their activities around their children on this special day. It is Vietnamese folklore that parents were working so hard to prepare for the harvest that they left the children playing by themselves. To make up for lost time, parents would use the Mid-Autumn festival as an opportunity to show their love and appreciation for their children.

Appropriately, the Mid-Autumn Festival is also called the Children’s Festival.

Trung-Thu activities are often centered on children and education. Parents buy lanterns for their children so that they can participate in the lantern procession at dawn. Lanterns represent brightness while the procession symbolizes success in school.

Vietnamese markets sell a variety of lanterns, but the most popular children’s lantern is the star lantern. Other children’s activities include arts and crafts in which children make face masks and lanterns.

Children also perform traditional Vietnamese dances for adults and participate in contests for prizes and scholarships. Unicorn dancers are popular in Trung-Thu festivities, the dancers weave their way through the crowded streets to the accompaniment of drums and cymbals.

Trung Thu is also a time for people to remember their relatives who have died. They light sweet smelling incense and burn bundles of fake Vietnamese money in their dead relatives’ memory. Money signifies good luck, which is carried up to the relatives in the burning smoke.