Soc Temple Festival – Photo: the Internet
That information is shared by Mr. Le Huu Manh – Vice Chairman of People’s Committee of Soc Son District about the organization of the Soc Temple Festival at the press briefing of Hanoi Party Committee on the afternoon of January 22, 2019. Accordingly, the Soc Temple Festival 2019 will be held in 3 days from February 10th-12th 2019 (from January 6th– 8th in Ky Hoi Lunar year), including 02 parts: the ceremony and the festival.
The ceremony includes: The opening ceremony at 7:00 on February 10, the incense offering ceremony, the drums performance to inaugurate the festival, and the funeral oration reading, followed by the procession and sacrifices of the villages. The closing ceremony on the afternoon of February 12 includes: incense offering, festival closing ceremony, sacrifice ceremony, ritualization of horses and elephants.
The festival includes: Organizing women’s leather volleyball competitions, wrestling competitions, organizing folk games: walking on stilts, rice cooking contest, balancing bridges, smashing pots … and performing arts activities in the festival.
Soc Temple festival has been under changes since 2018 and greatly appreciated by tourists and citizens. In 2019, Soc Temple festival will continue to promote success in festival organization in 2018, which is to carry out rituals of the modified procession. After carrying out the procession of bamboo flower, betel and areca, the Organization Board will take the offerings directly to the harem and do not distribute them in sensitive places to avoid repulsive offerings scrambling as happened in previous years. The offering will be divided into small portion by the Organization Board and be distributed at the appropriate time, not the time after the ceremony closing to avoid jostling and shoving, said Mr. Manh.
There has been no bamboo flower scrambling in Soc Temple Festival since 2018- Photo: VOV
Changes in organization methods will help to cut down the security force. The Organization Board will invest time and human resources in improving the quality of festival management, funeral oration, ensuring a formal ceremony, organizing more activities in the festival to attract tourists.
In addition, regarding organization of the Soc Temple Festival 2019, the Organization Board Committee will focus on some specific services during the festival such as: vehicle parking service with regulated fare price, no parking at the relic site, etc. Food booths must ensure food hygiene and safety and aesthetical criteria, no encroachment in area I of the relic. There will be no street vendors, road encroachment, violent games, gambling, superstitious books , etc. added Vice Chairman of People’s Committee of Soc Son.
Lan Huong