Children of Sang Pao School in Muong Khuong Commune, Lao Cai Province wear bright red jackets — Christmas gifts brought by volunteers from Hanoi. - VNS
HANOI: Gusts of northeast monsoon wind swept through the northern mountains, casting a blanket of thin biting mist over the region. On a rough, winding dirt road leading to the Sáng Pao Primary School in Muong Khuong Commune, Lao Cai province, a convoy of motorbikes inched its way uphill.
Beneath thick padded jackets, each motorbike carried carefully wrapped bags of Christmas gifts, including warm jackets, woollen hats, plastic sandals, comic books, candies, and school supplies. The drivers weren't Santa Clauses like those in fairy tales, but in the eyes of the mountain children, they were volunteers who brought magic to the villages every Christmas season.
At the end of every year, while major cities are ablaze with the twinkling red and green colours of the festive season, in many remote villages, Christmas remains just another cold winter day. Many children here have never seen a Christmas tree, never known Santa Claus and never received even a small gift.
Therefore, many charitable clubs from Hanoi, Hai Phong, Danang, HCM City, and other cities choose Christmas time to set out, carrying the warmth of the holiday season to places beyond the reach of city lights.
A volunteer helps a child put on a warm coat, one of many gifts brought to children in northern mountain regions.
Hanoi's volunteer club Anh Sao Dem Dong (Winter Starlight) with 18 young members started at 3am on that day of December. This year, Muong Kuong Commune was chosen as the main destination, amidst several consecutive severe cold waves. The journey spanned nearly 400km, including over 20km of slippery mountain roads due to night fog.
"We want to bring a little bit of Christmas spirit to places where children don't know what this holiday season is. In the city, joy is the lights; here, joy is seeing a child smile," said club head Nguyen Van Quan.
After more than 10 hours of travel, the volunteers arrived at Sáng Pao School while fog still covered the mountain slopes. The small school, with its makeshift classrooms roofed with old corrugated metal, is currently home to 278 students, over 80 per cent of whom are ethnic Mong children.
They live scattered across remote villages, between 3km and 7km from the school. Many have to walk for more than an hour each morning in the frozen weather.
Teacher Vang A Sính, head teacher of Grade 2 class, said that particularly on cold days, temperatures could drop below 3 degrees Celsius. “Warm clothes are very precious to the students here. Some wear hand-me-downs from older siblings for years, with cuffs worn thin,” he said.
That winter journey carried over 200 gifts, each one a small act of care from dozens of donors. Some students had knitted woollen hats for a month. Other small business owners used all revenue from their pre-Tet (Lunar New Year) sales to buy sandals for children.
Along the way, volunteers faced steep bends and slippery slopes, sometimes having to dismount and push motorbikes weighed down by gift baskets. Despite the hardship, no one complained.
The gift-giving ceremony took place under an old corrugated iron awning, where the cold wind still seeped through the cracks. When the boxes were opened, laughter echoed throughout the schoolyard. Seven-year-old Tua My, clutching her new red coat, whispered that she had never owned something so beautiful.
Her words made the group speechless. One young volunteer remarked, “In the city, Christmas is about shopping and gifts. Here, just a pair of warm socks is enough to make a child happy all winter.”
The gifts warmed not only small bodies, but also hearts. They carried a simple message: somewhere out there, people care.
Another journey, this time to Nam Lin Village in Ha Giang Province, undertaken by the Buoc Chan Xanh (Green Footsteps) group, proved even more arduous. Landslides blocked sections of road, forcing volunteers to walk nearly two hours in freezing 5°C winds.
“When we arrived, the children ran out like little birds,” recalled Phuong Anh, a group member. “Their faces were red from the cold, but their eyes were shining. Suddenly, all our fatigue vanished.”
For such young volunteers, slopes on the road during their journeys are not their biggest challenge. The real challenge is how to bring more gifts and help more people with limited resources.
Many young people said they were addicted to the feeling of being on a journey of volunteers, not because of exploring beautiful mountainous regions, but because each trip teaches them simple yet profound lessons about resilience, gratitude and sharing.
For many volunteers, the scene of children walking barefoot on the dirt road, yet still with bright smiles when arriving at their class, is really a lesson of perseverance. One student volunteer confided: "Seeing the children cherish each candy, I realised how much I used to waste."
Volunteering, they learn, is not simply about giving more. Gifts must be appropriate, safe and dignified, inspiring confidence rather than pity. Each trip becomes a lesson in empathy and responsibility.
Many volunteer groups today go beyond simply giving Christmas gifts, combining it with long-term support activities such as fundraising to build classrooms against the cold, purchasing books for school libraries, providing scholarships for underprivileged students, and sponsoring better Saturday meals for boarding students.
“The most valuable thing is not the gift value, but the perseverance of companionship. Children in mountain regions desperately need helping hands to bring them more opportunities for learning and development,” Pham Xuan Duy, an education authority official in the northern mountain province, said.
The meaning of these journeys, therefore, extends far beyond Christmas.
Many times, volunteers had to stop along the way due to hailstorms, vehicle breakdowns, or some catching colds because of the harsh weather. Still, most continue. The reason is simple: a child’s smile in the highlands is reward enough.
The trip ended up in the sunset over the deep green mountains. Volunteers watched the tiny children in red coats darting across the schoolyard like little flames. At that moment, no one spoke of the difficult road or the freezing weather. They simply smiled silently, feeling they had done something truly meaningful.
One of them, whose name is Huong, whispered: "For us, Christmas isn't about expensive gifts. It’s about the warmth of seeing a child no longer shivering.”
Perhaps, those smiles in those remote villages were the greatest gift they brought home from their 2025 Christmas journey – a season without glittering lights, yet rich with compassion.
Christmas in Vietnam isn't a traditional holiday, but over time, it has become an occasion for communities to connect through acts of caring and sharing. The trips to the highlands by volunteer groups are a beautiful example of the holiday season: not dazzling lights, not noisy squares, but warm -- like a small fire glowing through a winter night.
Far from glittering streets and decorated trees, Christmas in small mountain villages is quiet, yet full of human kindness. And it is these simple acts of sharing that illuminate the season in their own way. - Vietnam News/ANN
