In mid-April of the solar calendar every year, Khmer people in Ca Mau province are busy preparing to celebrate their traditional New Year. Like Lunar New Year, Chol Chnam Thmay Festival of the Khmer people, which has the meaning of celebrating the new year according to the traditional calendar of the people, is the age-recognition festival. This is an opportunity to educate children about filial piety to their ancestors, grandparents, and parents; family members gather together after months of hard work and labor and encourage each other to continue to strive for further development.

In Khmer, “Chôl” means “Entering” and “Chăm Thmây” means New Year. The Chol Chăm Thmây New Year has become a traditional festival of the entire ethnic community in the Mekong Delta region. For the Khmer, pagodas are places for people to perform religious rituals, beliefs and good traditional cultural activities on holidays and New Year. Daily work is temporarily put aside, everyone focuses on New Year activities. In the days before Tet, many Khmer families begin to prepare to see off the old year and welcome the new year. Activities to prepare for Tet often include repairing, cleaning, redecorating the house, and preparing enough food for the New Year.

Like every year, at the time of Chol Chnam Thmay Tet, Mr. Danh Do's family, a prestigious person in Khanh Tu hamlet, Dong Thoi commune, Cai Nuoc district, Ca Mau province, started cleaning and decorating their house, ancestral altar and preparing some traditional cakes, fruits and some other foods to prepare for Tet.

This year, his family’s joy of celebrating Tet was multiplied many times when they celebrated Tet in a new, spacious house. Mr. Danh Do said: “My family’s Tet activities took place at Salatel. As usual every year, my family members and I cleaned and rearranged the house together to pray for everything to go smoothly and well. When the New Year comes, family members wish each other good health and everyone has the opportunity to gather together after days of work.”

On April 14, people will wear beautiful clothes, prepare trays of food and offerings to go to the pagoda to celebrate the great calendar. The offerings include: incense, lamps, fruits to the pagoda to worship Buddha, chant sutras to celebrate the new year; April 15 is the day to hold the rice offering ceremony and build a sand mountain. Each family prepares rice to offer to the monks and nuns at the pagoda in the morning and at noon, in the afternoon, organizes a sand mountain building ceremony to seek blessings; April 16 is the ceremony to bathe the Buddha statue and the monks. At some pagodas, Salatel, the Management Board, and the Dharma Propagation Board are also busy cleaning and redecorating to prepare for the New Year ceremonies for the Khmer people.

Mr. Huu Nhon, residing in Hamlet 7, Tan Loc Commune, Thoi Binh District, said: Due to the increasingly developed social life, people are busy with work and production, some cultural activities of the Khmer people are becoming simpler. The rituals and ceremonies to welcome the new year of Chol Chnam Thmay will be a good opportunity to recreate and preserve the good traditional cultural features of our people for the younger generation.

"In my family, every year near Tet, children and grandchildren gather together to wrap banh tet, clean and decorate the house. On the main Tet days, we prepare a tray of food to bring to the pagoda to worship and ask the monk to chant sutras, welcome the fairies and perform the age-taking ritual, praying for all good things in the new year," said Mr. Huu Nhon.

It can be said that Chol Chnam Thmay Festival not only reflects the Khmer people's concept of the year's cycle, but also aims to educate people about filial piety, solidarity, and love for each other in the village. This is also an opportunity for people to meet each other to share blessings, congratulate, visit, discuss, and exchange experiences about the future.

The Chol Chnam Thmay Festival creates more solidarity and unity among the three ethnic groups, Kinh, Khmer, Hoa, and strengthens the village spirit and community solidarity. In addition, Chol Chnam Thmay Festival is also an occasion for Khmer people to express their dreams of happiness, their sense of goodness, and their gratitude to their ancestors, grandparents, and parents during the year.