Like many Asian countries, Vietnam has many festivals, focusing mainly on spring, the time when all things multiply, and also the leisure season. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, our country currently has a total of more than 13,000 festivals, large and small, of which 8,008 traditional festivals, 2,748 religious festivals, 1,755 historical festivals, nearly 500 cultural festivals – sports, industry festivals, festivals imported from abroad…
On average, Vietnamese people have 35 festivals every day, that is, nearly 2 festivals take place every hour. Some public opinion believes that the number of such festivals is too much, and that “Vietnamese people only have fun in January”, don’t worry regarding work, affect labor productivity, make it difficult for our country to catch up. compete with the world in terms of labor productivity.
Prof. Dr. Bui Quang Thanh: “The number of 13,000 festivals a year is not much because each village has one festival, while our country has hundreds of thousands of villages”
However, from the perspective of a cultural researcher, Prof. Dr. Bui Quang Thanh, a former official of the Vietnam National Institute of Culture and Arts, said:The core of Vietnamese culture arose from the village culture. Each village is a separate fortress, which includes residence space, livelihood space, cultural and spiritual space, community living space… Cultural and economic activities take place only within the scope of each village. vi internal villages to each other. With the number of hundreds of thousands of villages in our country, the number of such festivals is not much“.
“The number of such festivals contributes to a diverse, rich and lively cultural identity, imbued with Vietnamese identity. UNESCO also recommends that the diversity and richness of the festivals should be respected. And in fact, they are also very interested in learning regarding unique customs, imbued with cultural identity when reviewing Vietnam’s heritage registration documents.“, Prof. Dr. Bui Quang Thanh emphasized.
Further research, Prof. Dr. Bui Quang said, the essence of festivals in human civilizations is the collective activities of the community, expressing the worldview of human life and behavior of people. with the ecological and socio-cultural environment. With its nature as an agricultural country and wet rice civilization, many festivals of Vietnam aim to pray for favorable weather, trees to flourish, good crops, and to catch all kinds of aquatic species. bumper production.
For example, the spread fruit in the Phet Hien Quan festival in Tam Nong, Phu Tho is a red painted ball representing the sun, expressing the desire for sunshine all year long to help plants and trees grow. Or Cau Ngu festival in Thuan An ward, Hue city, Thua Thien – Hue province has a scene: the elderly toss money and items for the children to dress up as fish, squid, shrimp… to collect money. . The “Flock of fish” was collecting money when the fisherman threw a net to catch it, expressing the desire that the boat compartment was always full of fish and shrimp of the seafarers.
No bustle, not a Vietnamese festival