TL;DR: Tết Đoan Ngọ falls at the Ngọ hour on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month, considered in folk belief the time of the year when dương khí is strongest; it is also popularly called the festival for killing pests. Vietnamese people have the custom of eating rượu nếp and sour fruit early in the morning to "kill pests" inside the body, dyeing children's fingernails and toenails with lá móng, picking medicinal leaves at the Ngọ hour, and making offerings to ancestors to wish for good harvests and peaceful health.
Title: Tết Đoan Ngọ (the 5th day of the 5th lunar month): The day of "killing the pests" and the custom of eating rượu nếp
What is Tết Đoan Ngọ?
Tết Đoan Ngọ, familiarly known in folk speech as "Tết giết sâu bọ" (the festival for killing the pests), falls on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month every year. The word "Đoan" means beginning, while "Ngọ" refers to the hour of Ngọ (roughly 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.), when the sun stands at its zenith and the yang energy of heaven and earth is held to be at its strongest in the year. This is one of the oldest and most widespread traditional festivals across every region of Vietnam, from the Northern Delta and the Central region to the South, even though the names and the dishes differ somewhat from place to place.
Bùi Xuân Mỹ (2001) in the book Tục thờ cúng của người Việt calls this festival Tết Đoan Dương, while in folk speech it is commonly known as Tết mùng năm or the festival for "killing the pests".
A summary table of the traditional dishes of Tết Đoan Ngọ across the three regions of Vietnam.
| Region | Characteristic dishes | Fruit |
|---|---|---|
| The North | rượu nếp cẩm (fermented black glutinous rice) and nếp cái hoa vàng | northern plums, lychees |
| The Central region, especially Huế | bánh ú tro (ash cakes), chè kê (millet sweet soup) | |
| The South | cơm rượu shaped into round balls, bánh ú nước tro (ash-water cakes) | rambutans, mangosteens |
Where does Tết Đoan Ngọ originate?
As for its origins, Tết Đoan Ngọ is connected with the ancient agricultural culture of East Asia, where the 5th lunar month is the change of seasons, a time when pests and insects that harm crops thrive and threaten both the harvest and human health. People in the past believed that at the hour of Ngọ on the 5th day of the 5th month, when yang energy is at its peak, the pests and parasites in the human body are most easily destroyed if one eats sour, spicy and heating foods on an empty stomach early in the morning.
Tết Đoan Ngọ is also recorded in Chinese culture under the name Tết Đoan Dương, tied to the story of Khuất Nguyên, the loyal minister of the Warring States period who drowned himself in the Mịch La River to show his loyalty. Although there are similarities in timing and in certain customs, Vietnamese folk culture researchers stress that the Vietnamese Tết Đoan Ngọ has an identity of its own, bound closely to the indigenous wet-rice agricultural beliefs and to the custom of ancestor worship, and does not centre on the story of Khuất Nguyên as in China.
What is the custom of "killing the pests" at the start of the day?
The most characteristic feature of Tết Đoan Ngọ in Vietnam is the "killing the pests" rite, performed first thing in the morning, usually before 7 or 8 o'clock, while the stomach is still empty. Adults and children in the family eat cơm rượu nếp (fermented glutinous rice, made with black glutinous rice or nếp cái hoa vàng) together with sour fruits such as plums, lychees and green mangoes. Folk belief holds that the sharp, warming taste of the fermented rice combined with the sourness of the fruit makes the "pests", a metaphor for worms and disease seeds in the body, "drunk" and destroyed, helping the body stay strong and warding off illness through the sweltering summer ahead.
Phan Kế Bính (1915) in Việt Nam phong tục records that the breakfast on the 5th day included rượu nếp, boiled eggs, chè kê, bánh đa, peaches, plums and watermelon; the adults drank wine, and this was called killing the pests. According to Bùi Xuân Mỹ (2001), people in the past held that the human body, especially the digestive tract, normally harbours pests; if they are not eliminated they multiply ever more and cause harm. Killing them is no easy matter, and in the whole year only the 5th day of the 5th month is when they come out into the open, so that is when they can be killed. Also according to Bùi Xuân Mỹ (2001), the way to kill the pests with food is to eat rượu nếp first to make them drunk, then eat fruit to make them die.
Traditional dishes of Tết Đoan Ngọ by region
Each region of Vietnam has its own way of preparing the offering tray and the Đoan Ngọ dishes. In the North, rượu nếp cẩm and nếp cái hoa vàng, northern plums and lychees are indispensable. The Central region, especially Huế, is famous for bánh ú tro (bánh gio), cakes made from glutinous rice soaked in ash water, wrapped in leaves and eaten with sugarcane molasses, along with chè kê. In the South, people favour cơm rượu shaped into round balls, bánh ú nước tro, and orchard fruits such as rambutans and mangosteens in their proper season. However much they differ in form, these dishes all revolve around a common spirit: using sour, sharp and bitter flavours to cleanse the body and drive off evil influences at the start of summer.
What is the spiritual and family meaning of Tết Đoan Ngọ?
Beyond the health-care aspect, Tết Đoan Ngọ is also an occasion for families to set out an offering tray to the ancestors, the deities and the thổ công (the household land deity), to express gratitude and to pray for a year of abundant harvests and a peaceful household. In many places people still keep the custom of gathering medicinal herbs at exactly the hour of Ngọ on the 5th day of the 5th month, believing that the healing properties of plants picked at this moment reach their greatest efficacy, a custom that reflects folk knowledge of medicinal plants tied to the cycle of the seasons.
According to the records of Bùi Xuân Mỹ (2001), folk belief holds that if you pick medicinal plants at exactly noon (the hour of Ngọ) on the day of Tết Đoan Ngọ, every plant is a good medicine. The most favoured include ngải cứu (mugwort), lá đơn, lá ích mẫu (motherwort), lá cối xay and lá vối; people take them home, dry them and boil them for drinking water. This is what the book records as a custom and a folk belief, not a recommendation to use medicine.
What is the custom of dyeing fingernails and toenails on the 5th day of the 5th month?
It is the custom of using lá móng (henna leaves) to dye the fingernails and toenails of children on Tết Đoan Ngọ, a practice recorded by both Phan Kế Bính (1915) and Bùi Xuân Mỹ (2001).
According to Phan Kế Bính (1915) in Việt Nam phong tục, children were usually given their fingertips and toes dyed with henna leaves, except that the index finger and the second toe were left undyed. Bùi Xuân Mỹ (2001) records this custom in more detail: henna leaves were pounded fine and applied to the nails the evening before, bound up with lá vông, and by morning the nails took on a bright red like vermilion. The book also records the folk beliefs attached to this red nail colour, but this is something the book recounts as a belief rather than something verified.
Đoan Ngọ in today's life
Nowadays, although the pace of modern life means many rituals are simplified, the custom of eating rượu nếp and sour fruit on the morning of the 5th day of the 5th month is still widely maintained in Vietnamese families as a piece of culinary culture bound up with childhood memories. It is also an occasion for the generations in a family to gather, recall folk stories and pass on to their children the meaning of this traditional festival.
