Celebration of the
Seventh Day of the Seventh Month
In the Lunar Calendar
by Linh

The other name for this holiday is Nguu Lang, Chuc Nu. On this holiday, my family will worship. Before the seventh day of the seventh month, I help clean the altar and my parents go to China Town to buy fruits, cookies, and marigolds (bong van tho) to put on the altar. The next morning, I help my parents bring all the food to the altar. My father listens to prayers on the tape, it makes me feel really sleepy and I can smell the aroma of the incense and golden marigolds. On the altar, I see 12 incense sticks, 3 cups of jasmine tea, 1 bunch of marigolds in the vase, and 6 kinds of fruits (small bananas, apples, lychees, oranges and longan.) In the middle of the altar, I see 7 kinds of cookies. There are round and crunchy coconut ones, soft rectangle green bean and 5 colored tapioca cookies. All the cookies make me feel so hungry, that I want to eat them right away. The next thing, my father puts 7 incense sticks around the cookies and the fruits. The incense makes my house smell like smoke. After the worship, my two sisters and I share the cookies. They taste delicious and remind me of Vietnam. One kind of cookies that I really like to buy on the way home from school is the green beans cookies (banh dau xanh) because they melt in my mouth like peanut butter.

This holiday is one of the typical holidays in Vietnam.

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