In the context of an agricultural economy, traditional festivals of the Vietnamese people are usually linked to the cycle of crops. The festivals held in spring and autumn reflect the peasants' hope for a bumper crop and prosperity.
Festivals thus have a cyclical, seasonal character.
Since the Festivals are organised at the level of villages, which are the cells of Vietnamese society, they are also called village festivals . Nevertheless, since villages result from the splitting up of a big village or the merger of several smaller ones, some festivals involve many villages, and sometimes an even larger area. Vietnam's traditional festivals offer a clear illustration of this definition. Owning to the influence of Confucianism, Vietnamese society operates under the constraints of tight rules which determine the status of each person in accordance with age, sex and kinship. Yet, during festivals, many social conventions were ignored, and this led to some kind of confusion, which upset various taboos and social barriers.