The Tet Five-Fruit Tray

In a home in Hanoi, a hand of green bananas goes at the very bottom of the Tết fruit tray and holds up everything above it. Tết is the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam. Yet on the Tết tray of a home in the south, the bananas are nowhere to be seen.

In the days before Tết, families go out together to choose their fruit. On the evening of the 30th, the last night of the old year, many households sweep and tidy the house first. Then they start on the tray, in time for the rite at the turn of the year. The adults set the tray on the ancestral altar. It is a way of giving thanks to the ancestors, in the spirit of an old saying: whoever eats the fruit should remember the one who planted the tree. It is also the whole family's wish for the new year.

In Hanoi, the mother builds her tray from the bottom up. First she lays a hand of green bananas across the base, curving upward like an open palm. In the very center she sets a round pomelo. Some families choose a Buddha's hand instead. Around it, the smaller fruits take their places one by one: peaches, persimmons and tangerines.

Once arranged, the tray already speaks several wishes. At the bottom, the bananas carry a prayer that the whole family be sheltered. In the middle, the round pomelo is a wish for a full, well-rounded year. A Buddha's hand is a fruit shaped like the hand of the Buddha. Where a family uses one, the center of the tray asks the Buddha for protection. On the outer ring, the peaches, persimmons and tangerines add red, the color of warmth and good luck.

She staggers the fruit, each piece tucked into the gap between two below. She prefers an odd number of fruits on the tray. Any fruit with too strong a smell, with thorns or with rough, bumpy skin, she leaves behind. She also avoids fruit so green that it would still not be ripe once Tết is over. Many families also try to gather all five colors on a single tray: white, green, black, red and yellow.

In the south, a husband and wife arrange their tray on that same last evening, but they arrange it the way someone writes a sentence. The fruits they choose are a custard apple, a cluster of figs, a coconut, a papaya and a mango. Said aloud in one breath, their Vietnamese names turn the tray into a prayer. It says cầu sung vừa đủ xài, a wish for plenty, just enough to spend.

The custard apple, mãng cầu, gives the word cầu, to pray for. The coconut, dừa, sounds almost like vừa, just right. The papaya, đu đủ, gives the word đủ, enough. The mango, xoài, closes the line with the word xài, to spend. In the new year, the house will have enough to spend and use.

Each family reads the line a little differently. Some do not set out figs, and what remains is cầu vừa đủ xài. Others add a pineapple at the foot of the tray. People in the south call the pineapple trái thơm, the fragrant fruit, so the line becomes cầu thơm vừa đủ xài. However it is read, the line always stops at vừa đủ xài, just enough to spend.

Beside the tray, the couple adds a pair of watermelons, green rind wrapped around red flesh. Tết decorations in the south usually come in pairs.

The bananas have no place on this tray, and the name explains why. In the southern accent, chuối, the banana, sounds almost like chúi, to pitch forward headfirst. It is the posture of someone bent over hard work all year. No one wants the Tết tray to call up that picture, so the bananas stay out. Oranges and tangerines are often missing too. The word cam, orange, calls up cam chịu, to put up with hardship. There is also the saying quýt làm cam chịu, the tangerine does the deed and the orange bears the blame. Avoiding them is a folk word game, like picking only the prettiest words for a New Year greeting.

The orange alone is read in two ways. In the north, and in Buddhist teaching, the word cam carries a sweet taste instead, the sweetness that comes after bitter days. As the old saying goes, khổ tận cam lai, when suffering ends, sweetness arrives. A fruit avoided in one region can be a good wish in another.

In central Vietnam, the grandmother arranges her tray without fussing over which fruits must be there. She follows a short rule: có gì cúng nấy, offer whatever there is. Her tray often holds dragon fruit, watermelon, custard apple, pineapple and figs. There is a hand of bananas as well. Here, the banana is simply one of the fruits in season, still fresh. People often explain this simplicity by the harsh sun and wind and the dry, poor soil, or by years when fruit was scarce. A full tray or a small one will do, as long as she offers it with a sincere heart.

As people left one region to make a home in another, the northern tray and the southern tray blended together. The folklorist Quách Trọng Trà says this is also why the five-fruit tray today has no required pattern.

A pomegranate is packed tight with seeds, so people often link it with the wish for many children and grandchildren. The researcher Huỳnh Ngọc Trảng also sees that wish in fruits full of seeds. To him, the whole tray holds the hope of a home in harmony, at peace and with plenty.

However it is arranged, every tray shares one name with the number five hidden inside. It is mâm ngũ quả, the tray of five fruits. Yet no one knows for certain which five fruits they are. Each region chooses in its own way, favoring fruit that is sweet, good in color, large and round.

As for why it is five, everyone has an explanation. Looking at the five colors on the tray, some see the five things that people of old believed made up everything in the world. Together these are called ngũ hành. Others trace the same colors to a Buddhist scripture that mentions fruit of five colors. In them they see the five roots of goodness in the human heart.

Looking at the number itself, some say five is the number of the center and the number of life. Others place five at the point of birth, where seeds sprout, trees grow and all things multiply. And looking at the five fruits, some see the five blessings, among them long life, good health and peace.

Each idea has people who believe it.

For all the talk of the number five, a Tết tray today often holds more than five kinds of fruit, some as many as nine or ten. People still call it mâm ngũ quả. The name stays put, while the fruit changes with each region, each home and each season.

After Tết comes the day the tray is taken down. The adults lift it from the altar, cut each fruit and share it out on plates for the family meal. The fruit was chosen with care so it would still be good to eat when it came down, with not a bite wasted. People see these pieces of fruit as the first blessing of spring, given by the ancestors to their children and grandchildren.

Only now is the prayer on the tray truly eaten. In Hanoi it is a juicy piece of pomelo, in the south a golden slice of mango, in central Vietnam a red wedge of watermelon. As for which five fruits they are, each family has answered with a tray of its own. Then everyone in the house shares the fruit, a portion for each, just enough.