Korean New Year Customs and Symbols

The Spring Festival of the Korean people mainly consists of New Year's Eve, rituals and games, New Year's makeup, New Year's paintings, and catching the ghosts of the night light.

1 New Year's Eve

The Korean family New Year's Eve vigil all night long, the ancient Gayeqin and tube xiao music will bring people into the new year. During the festival, men, women and children sing and dance, and hold competitions such as the springboard press and tug-of-war. On the evening of the 15th day of the first month, a traditional gathering is held to celebrate the festival, in which a few elderly people are elected to ascend the "Moon Watching Stands" to be the first to see the bright moon, which signifies good health, progress, and good fortune for their children and grandchildren. Afterwards, everyone dances around the lighted "moon frame", accompanied by long

drums, tube pipes and suona music.

2 Posting Spring Festival Couplets and Eating Eight Treasures Rice

Every family puts up spring festival couplets, cooks various kinds of rich meals and eats "eight treasures rice," and on New Year's Eve, the whole family keeps vigil all night long, playing the Gayageum and the dongxiao. At dawn on the first day of the year, people put on their festive costumes to pay homage to their elders. During the festival, men, women and children sing and dance, press the springboard, tug of war.

3 Festivals and Games

The Spring Festival is the second most important festival after the Mid-Autumn Festival among the Koreans. It is the most important event on January 1 of the lunar calendar, the morning of the New Year, when ancestors are worshipped (contributing food and drink and performing great rituals to them), signifying the beginning of a new year.

The Freshmen have strict rules for ancestor worship, and the arrangement of the offering table alone includes "Fish East, Meat West", "Head East, Tail West", and "Red East, White West", At the end of the festival the children pay their respects to the adults, who return the favor and wish them well. Then, families and relatives get together to play games such as "Hub Throwing" (a traditional Korean game played with four wooden blocks) and "Jumping Board" (a game in which girls take turns jumping on both ends of a long wooden board

). They also give a blessing strainer (a ladle-like tool for straining water), which is meant to be filled with blessings, to other people or hang it in their homes. After paying homage to the elders, people play various folk games, such as you

ts, jumping boards and so on. Children fly kites, play gyro, shuttlecock, play ice car and so on.

4 Korean Spring Festival Food

When the Lunar New Year comes, the streets and villages are dressed in festive costumes. Families clean their houses inside and outside. On New Year's Day, housewives put out a variety of sumptuous New Year's rice and dishes with ethnic characteristics, and the whole family gathers

to celebrate the festival. Rice cakes, rice cake soup, Joseon's eight-pot rice, and rice sticks are essential to the festivities. Rice cake soup is made by cutting rice cakes into willow leaves, putting various ingredients into them, and cooking them in broth, which is tasty and nutritious and loved by everyone

. People often ask how many bowls of rice cake soup a child has eaten, that is, ask him how old he is.

5 years of makeup, years of paintings, catch the night light ghosts, etc.:

Every year, the Spring Festival, the Korean women are wearing beautiful national dress, from morning to night to be busy in the kitchen, married to the Korean foreign girls should also be the same as the Korean women from morning to night. Chinese people have to eat New Year's cake on the Spring Festival

Koreans also have special food for the Spring Festival, which is collectively called "New Year's dinner". The most representative Chinese New Year dish that has been handed down to this day is "rice cake soup". In ancient times, the Korean people worshiped the sun, and the white, small, round rice cake slices represented the sun, and eating rice cake slice soup on the morning of the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar meant welcoming the sun's light. In addition, according to the original religious beliefs, it also represents the seriousness and cleanliness of the time of the old and the new, and the resurrection of all things. In the past, the soup used to be made with pheasant soup, but nowadays pheasant is hard to come by, so beef or chicken soup is used instead. In some areas, Koreans also like to add dumplings stuffed with pheasant meat, mung bean sprouts, mushrooms and kimchi to the rice cake soup. In addition, every family

has prepared food such as honey glutinous nuts, cinnamon soup, eight treasures of rice, and rice candies with meat slices to receive friends and relatives who come to pay New Year's greetings.