Chuc Mung Nam Moi! Tet and the Tet Offensive

Well, for those of you who don't know what that means, it means Happy New Year in Vietnamese. Today is Tet and its the year of the tiger! I think the fact that it is Tet again really reminded me of what everything encompasses when the new year comes around. There is a lot of preparation for the new year, with cleaning, praying, and of course celebrating. This is why I think the Tet Offensive was such an impacting statement by the North Vietnamese. Every Vietnamese person loves Tet, I mean whats not to love, you get TONS of delicious food, you see all your family, you get to see lion dances, you get li xi = MONEY (my favorite part of Tet aside from the feel good family stuff, that's kinda cool too), you get to gamble (funny, another one of my favorite parts about Tet) and firecrackers are deafening your ears! There is so much excitement and craziness that accompanies it that you can't help but get lost in the fun. I can even go as far to say that Tet celebration is more fun than New Year's celebration. I mean we do the drinking (well not me..) and we do the countdown and the fire works and the Times Square thing, but for Tet we go all out! I think it's one of the most fun aspects about being part of the Vietnamese culture and community. My dad loves firecrackers, every year he would buy tons and tons of the stuff to set off at our store back in California and hire lion dancers to dance around the store for good luck. Luck is another aspect about Tet that is such a crucial component because Asians are very superstitious. You have to clean before Tet because cleaning on Tet means your sweeping out your good luck too! Make sure you don't buy anything on Tet because that means you'll be spending money all year long! Well that's just the background for the Tet celebration but I think its important to know about it to see what major effect that the Tet Offensive had.

I hadn't really thought about the Tet Offensive and the significance of it being on Tet until Tet came this year. Tet is a time of celebration and promises of a new year. It is a joyous time when you reflect and move forward. There is no fighting on Tet, it's just fun. I think this is why even though it was a "military loss" it was still a powerful offense. Simply by fighting on this day, the NVA showed that they were willing to sacrifice everything for their cause and that they were not going to back down. Tet is the biggest celebration of the year and to forfeit the celebration and fight instead just proves how determined they were to win the war. As you can imagine, the fighting during this celebration indefinitely brought down the moral. If it brought down the moral for the Americans, think of what it did for the Southern Vietnamese, who celebrate it. Just going off of my memories of Tet, I would be waiting and waiting for it to come because I know how much fun it would be, and for it to have been overshadowed by fighting and war would have been devastating. The Vietnamese really only have one holiday, and that is Tet. For the NVA to fight on this peaceful day was just an example of their unrelenting efforts for independence. I think knowing the background about Tet is important to know the level of effectiveness the Tet Offensive had in the war. Even if the NVA knew they couldn't win, I wouldn't be surprised if they fought anyway because of the message that it brought, they would throw away celebration and peace for a greater cause, this should have been something the U.S. took notice of.