In Vietnam, the New Year is formally known as Tết Nguyên Đán, though it is more commonly called by its shortened name, Tet.

Generally speaking, people begin to stock New Year food, buy New Year pictures, and prepare offerings for Spring Festival in mid-December. A few days before Tet, people are busy cleaning houses, scrubbing statues, hanging New Year paintings, and visiting graves. Many families like to insert a "Spring Pole" or a large banyan tree branch in front of their doors. Some also like to sprinkle lime powder to draw a chessboard and an arrow outside the door. All of these are used for the purpose of driving out ghosts and misfortune. Different areas of Vietnam have various ways to celebrate Tet, but most have a three-day Spring Festival.

The thirtieth day of the twelfth lunar month is Vietnamese New Year’s Eve. It has two implications: first, to ring out the Old Year and to ring in the New Year and second; to expel ghosts and to bring blessings of peace. After a big dinner in the evening, family members will sit around and talk together while eating candies, fruit and other snacks. Around midnight people drum, sing, dance and light firecrackers to celebrate the New Year.

On the morning of New Year’s Day, every household worships their ancestors at the family altar, which has been thoroughly cleaned for the three kitchen gods. The offerings generally include bánh chư'ng, braised fish, meat balls, roasted pork, pickled onions and beef. After the worship, children wish elderly adults a Happy New Year and the adults give them red envelopes with money known as Ĺ X́.  

Families eat rice bánh chư'ng, which is rice wrapped in reed leaves into a large square packet. It is meant to represent the Earth. There are two shapes of bánh chư'ng and bánh dày: square and round, which means the sky is round and the ground is flat, though bánh chư'ng is far more popular and considered a national dish. The bánh chư'ng is stuffed with pork, bean paste or nuts. The bánh chư'ng is made very large, around four to five pounds.
 

The most interesting aspect of New Year’s Day is that the Vietnamese focus on the first person who visits them. It is said that one’s whole year will be full of bad luck if a treacherous, evil person visits his home first. Therefore, in advance many families ask an honest, kind person to visit their houses very early so that everything will go well in the next year. New Year’s Day also has a lot of other taboos, such as: not to quarrel, not to speak rude words, not to borrow things, not to collect debts, not to do farm work, and not to sweep the floor as that sweeps the luck away.

There are a large number of attractive events held during Vietnam New Year, such as dragon and lion dances and theatrical performances. The most popular activity to play is a type of chess, cờ tướng, which is more similar to Chinese chess than Western chess. As performance entertainment the chess pieces can be acted by real people and the chessboard is painted on the ground. Two chess players control and order the movements of those "chess pieces" and spectators beat drums to cheer the "chess pieces" on. This activity gives people a strong sense of reality, deeply loved by the Vietnamese. There is no doubt that Vietnamese New Year is full of joy, vigor and fun.

For lots more information on Tet, check out Wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E1%BA%BFt