The Legend of the Tet Pole

On the afternoon of the 23rd day of the last lunar month of the year, a tall bamboo pole goes up in the middle of the courtyard of Grandfather's house. Its tip sways in the wind. From it hang a string of colored paper tassels and a few small clay chimes that jingle softly. The pole stands there like a gatekeeper, quiet and steady, guarding the house through all the days of Tết, the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam.

The old story goes like this. It is a fairy tale that grandparents passed down by word of mouth through many generations, and the researcher Nguyễn Đổng Chi wrote it down in his collection of Vietnamese fairy tales.

Very long ago, almost all the land in this world belonged to demons. They held everything from the plains to the mountain slopes, from the valleys to the coast. The Vietnamese had no land to plow and no place to plant rice. They crowded into the few small pieces of ground that were left. They worked hard and still did not have enough to eat, because there were too few fields.

After suffering for a long time, the people knelt down and begged heaven and earth for help.

And Bụt appeared.

In the old fairy tales, Bụt is a kindly spirit who often steps in to rescue good people. He appeared calm and caring, and told them there would be a way to win the land back from the demons.

Bụt went to the demons and offered to buy a little land. The demons were greedy and cunning and did not want to give any up, so they asked how much he meant to buy.

Bụt asked only for a piece of land as big as the shadow of his monk's robe.

The demons looked at the plain cloth robe and guessed its shadow would cover no more than a small corner of a yard. They nodded at once. In their hearts they thought that selling a shadow so tiny would cost them nothing.

But the demons had no idea what was about to happen.

Bụt gently tossed his robe high into the sky.

The robe rose and rose, wider and wider. Like a cloud spreading across the horizon, its shadow fell and covered the whole earth. It reached from the highest mountains to the farthest edge of the sea. All the land, every inch of field, every patch of forest, every riverbank and sandy shore, lay inside the shadow of that robe.

The demons gaped and could not say a word.

As they had promised, the demons had to give all the land back to the Vietnamese. The whole crowd of them streamed down to the sea and left the mainland entirely to humans. The people were overjoyed. They plowed, planted and built houses. Fields sprang up and villages rose.

But the story does not end there.

Some time later, the demons came to find Bụt. They told him that the sea was wide but sad and strange. What they missed most was the graves of their ancestors, which still lay on the mainland. They asked for permission, once a year, in the last days before Tết, to come ashore, visit the graves, and burn incense in remembrance.

Bụt was a compassionate being. He listened and nodded his agreement. Everyone has ancestors to remember.

Yet Bụt also worried for the people. Even a few days with the demons back on land could cause trouble without a clear boundary. So he gave them one instruction.

In front of every house, he said, they should raise a tall bamboo pole in the middle of the yard. At its tip they should hang charms and sacred objects, as each family's custom was. It was to be called a cây nêu, the Tết pole. When the demons saw it, they would know the land belonged to people, and they would not dare step in.

The people did as he said. Every year in the last days of that month, house after house raised a pole in its yard. At the tip of the tall bamboo hung charms and sacred objects: colored paper tassels in one place, clay chimes in another, a sacred leaf written in red ink in a third. The chimes jingled in the cool wind of that month. The demons coming up from the sea saw the poles and knew that every house already had its owner. They quietly visited the graves of their ancestors, then went back to the sea without daring to disturb anyone.

Since then, every year before Tết, a pole has gone up in front of one house after another across the land of Vietnam.

The pole is not big or heavy or complicated. It is only a bamboo pole, a string of chimes, and a quiet word spoken between heaven and earth: in this house, everyone has gathered, all together, and Tết has come.

Late on a day at the end of the year, the bamboo tip leans a little in the wind and then straightens. The family sits inside the warm house, knowing that out in the yard the pole stands guard, just as their grandparents raised it long ago. The clay chimes ring, light as a bell calling spring to come back.