KVT – Hoài niệm về: Tết Trung Thu…Lễ hội của Thiếu nhi

An interesting piece.
Pedantically I’ll point out that the ‘poke’ associated with pigs is not a basket in which they are kept: it comes from an English expression which sums up a situation where someone has purchased something without checking it before handing over the money, the ‘poke’ referring to a bag or sack (from the same root as ‘pouch’ or ‘pocket’).

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/a-pig-in-a-poke.html

A later confusion is with the ‘poke bonnet’ which became popular in the early 1800s:

http://oregonregency.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-to-make-regency-poke-bonnet.html

A more modern, sexist usage suggests that a man could become interested in an ugly woman wearing such a bonnet as the hat shaded the face head-on and in profile. He would then feel cheated once the bonnet was removed and the wearer’s face fully revealed: ‘No, she was a pig in a poke’.
There’s enough evidence to suggest that the earlier mediaeval usage is the true one.

KVT to AMANDA BUSH:

Thanks for your comments and research on pigs in pokes.

I was totally off the beam in my usage of the idiom and will get the editorial team at GV to change the sentence: ‘For lucky kids there were little pastry pigs…….often in woven paper pokes’ to: ‘For lucky kids there were little pastry pigs in paper cages that represent woven bamboo cages that some farmers still use to carry their live pigs to market.