This is also an occasion for every household to revere and offer the fruits of their labor to ancestors and deities, while conveying wishes for an abundant life and favorable harvests. Amid the gathering atmosphere of the entire community, traditional customs, rituals, and cultural values continue to be preserved and handed down across generations.

On the morning of September 25, in Mường Nhà commune, the celebratory atmosphere of the Khẩu Hó Festival was distinctly evident inside the homes of the Lào ethnic group across Na Há, Na Khoang, Mường Lói, Na Cọ, and Bản Xẻ villages. From early morning, families prepared offerings, traditional attire, and ceremonial trays laden with native dishes. Village elders guided younger generations in arranging ritual items, youths lent a hand, and children eagerly took part in festival duties.

In Na Há village, preparations for the Khẩu Hó Festival enlivened domestic hearths. Harvest produce was carefully selected to prepare feasts, prominently featuring steamed sticky rice prepared from young green rice flakes, a paramount offering presented to ancestors. In the worldview of the Lào people, grains of rice are not merely products of labor, but are closely bound to spiritual life, the joy of bountiful harvests, and aspirations for prosperous livelihoods.

Inside the home of Lò Văn Coong, every ritual duty was executed with care and thoroughness. Family members adorned traditional Lào ethnic garments and gathered early. Elderly individuals oversaw pivotal ritual stages, while women and youths were assigned to prepare offerings and support logistics. Offerings spanned traditional foods - such as young sticky rice, chicken, dried meats, stream fish, and bee pupae - alongside fruits, tea, water, and wine to present to ancestors and deities.

Lò Văn Coong stated that for the Lào community in Mường Nhà, during the Khẩu Hó Festival, villagers use early-season grains to conduct ceremonies honoring ancestors, expressing deep gratitude to grandparents, parents, and forefathers who nurtured family well-being. Consequently, the ceremonial tray carries not only material significance, but embodies wishes for favorable crop seasons and an abundant, peaceful life.

For Vì Thị Thương in Na Há village, the Khẩu Hó Festival serves as an opportunity for young children to directly engage in traditional festive rites. To her, this brings not only the merriment of a celebration, but serves as a conduit for children to understand their ethnic group’s heritage more deeply. Youths actively participate in the festival, joining grandparents and parents in preparing and presenting offerings, fostering immense joy and cultural pride. She wishes her children to absorb that same profound pride, continuing to preserve their ancestral traditions.

At the home of Lường Văn Nó in Na Khoang village, this year’s Khẩu Hó Festival bustled with even greater joy as children working far away returned home. Inside the residence, post-harvest conversations stretched out beside the fresh rice tray. Nó shared that the festival serves as an occasion for family members, clans, and the wider community to reunite, share the first meal of new rice, and celebrate after a farming season. Through rituals, prayers, traditional gastronomy, ethnic garments, folk songs, and the melodies of the raft panpipe, cultural values are transmitted across generations.

Lường Văn Nó expressed that the Khẩu Hó Festival has been sustained by local Lào people through generations, organized annually on the Full Moon of the eighth lunar month. This year, his family was particularly elated to receive attention from local authorities. Local leaders arrived to share in the celebrations, presenting gifts and encouraging villagers to safeguard the Khẩu Hó Festival and traditional Lào customs, motivating the community to prevent cultural fading.

Within the ceremonial space of the Khẩu Hó Festival, traditional music remains indispensable. The notes of the raft panpipe played by Lò Văn Bun echoed across the village, adding cheerful melodies to the festive day. Bun stated that the raft panpipe is intimately tied to Lào traditional culture, creating an exhilarating mood during festivals. Around its tunes, cultural lore is carried forward, allowing heritage values to manifest naturally within community life rather than being confined to stage performances.

In contemporary life, the Khẩu Hó Festival provides a living space for culture to be handed down naturally within the community. Youths practice rituals alongside grandparents and parents, savor traditional dishes, listen to raft panpipe melodies, and learn the customs of their ancestors.

Đặng Văn Tuấn, Chairman of the Mường Nhà commune People’s Committee, noted that the locality considers preserving the Khẩu Hó Festival as protecting community cultural values rather than merely maintaining a ritual. During this year’s festival, the local administration combined practical rites with documentation inventorying of the New Rice Festival (Khẩu Hó) to preserve and promote traditional Lào cultural assets, while supplementing archives to nominate it for national intangible cultural heritage status.

Đặng Văn Tuấn remarked that inventorying and documentation clarify rituals, ceremonial items, cuisine, traditional costumes, music, and associated practices, establishing a foundation to safeguard and bequeath cultural values to future generations. Activities adhere strictly to indigenous customs, minimizing staging and prioritizing the natural living spaces of families and the community.

For the Lào people of Mường Nhà, the Khẩu Hó Festival safeguards memories of the new rice season, family, and community across generations. As children today join their parents and grandparents in offering ceremonies, listening to the raft panpipe, and tasting new rice, they comprehend the origins of their traditional festival. Through these close-knit experiences, culture is transmitted organically, turning each festival season into an enduring link between ancestral memory and modern rhythms of life.