Our Korean Lunar New Year

This week was atypical and awesome thanks to the Lunar New Year. This is the same holiday, that I always thought of as Chinese New Year, which is celebrated by many countries in East Asia. As one of the most celebrated holidays here, Korean New Year possessed much of the build up and excitement of a typical December holiday season. The first day of the new Lunar New Year, called 설날 (seol-nal), was Monday, but most people had time off through Wednesday.

It was my first time celebrating this holiday, and it seems like I experienced a lot of new things. Of course I still don't know everything special about this holiday, but I'll do my best just to share what our Korean New Year was like. For our Lunar New Year, we went to visit Isaac's father and stayed with him for a couple of days.

The past several weeks, monkeys have been popping up everywhere. Not live monkeys, but monkey faced donuts, special banana flavored ice cream, stuffed animals, that kind of thing. This lunar year is the year of the monkey, so in anticipation of that, stores and restaurants have been putting monkey faces on all sorts of products. And because everyone was off of work, and the stores and streets all have special decorations, there was that giddy atmosphere just like during the December holiday season. So even as an outsider with no prior attachments to the Korean New Year, I felt excited too.

When I think of New Year's Day, as in the usual American January 1st edition, all I can think of is eating food with family. Collards and black-eyed peas are the traditional foods you're supposed to eat, representing dollars and pennies you will get in the coming year. Although picky me doesn't remember eating either of these foods, (I do remember dreading the smell of cooked collard greens) this food tradition seems cute to me.

On Korean New Year, you are supposed to eat 떡국 (ddeok-guk) for breakfast. It's a hearty and simple soup with meaty broth, chewy rice cake and beef. Endlessly chewing the white pieces of rice cake, which have no taste of their own, is like a fresh clean start to the new year.

I first encountered this dish last year, when I visited Isaac in Korea over my winter break. We ate ddeokguk with his father on January 1st. Back then this dish was surprising and very strange to me, and to my stomach which is not used to eating meat soup for breakfast. But this time I anticipated this special meal, and was able to really enjoy it. I also gobbled up a chocolate chip cookie an hour before, waking up my stomach with something more familiar.

It seems like gifts are very important for Korean holidays. When special days approach like Korean Thanksgiving or New Year, the stores start stocking gift sets. Travelling on subways and buses, we saw many people carrying the special fabric bags that are given out with the gift sets, usually proudly bearing the product's name or brand. I really enjoyed walking through the stores over the past month or so and seeing these special products.

Here are two examples of the essential Spam gift set. We saw more displays of potted meat gift sets than any other type. I thought these particular ones were nice because they also include cooking oils. I'm pretty sure my brother would enjoy receiving one of these, and he would probably happily tote around the reusable bag with a giant SPAM logo.

Here's a few more. Shampoo and toothpaste decorated with Audrey Hepburn's face and Vincent Van Gogh's paintings.

Traditional Korean drinks like rice liquor with ginseng or berries looked very nice too, packaged in pretty pottery with tiny cups.

Dried fish and shrimp. I like to imagine giving this gift to my sister. Her facial expression would certainly be way different than what this company expected when they made such a nice looking gift set. Actually I can think of a few family members who would have funny responses to this.

Other sets I saw: apples, Asian pears and oranges - all perfect specimens and carefully packed as if they were delicate glass orbs, ginseng roots resting on beds of soft green moss, mushrooms of shapes and colors that I never knew existed. These kinds can be quite pricy, and sadly they were harder to find by the time I got up the nerve to go around a store taking pictures.

Probably I dedicated too much time to describing those awesome gift sets. There really is more to Korean New Year. A big part of it is about family -  spending time with those here and honoring those who are not.

Eating meals with family and calling relatives far away are the familiar ways to share time with those loved ones still around you.

One way to honor family members who are no longer here is through a gift of traditional fruits and nuts. I like to think of it as the original and ultimate holiday gift set: Asian pears, apples, persimmons, chestnuts and dried jujubes along with dried fish and soju, the traditional Korean rice liquor. To the right are these foods stacked up as Isaac's father prepared them. They are presented at a special place - like an altar within the home or a grave - by family members to deceased relatives. For our Korean New Year, we honored Isaac's grandparents with this ultimate gift set.

In order to do that, we needed to take a bit of a drive. Although it is a densely populated country, travelling through the countryside of South Korea you will see countless mountains covered in trees, unscathed by roads and buildings. People tend to live in the valleys, looking like puddles of civilization gathered in the land's cracks and crevices.

But there are some exceptions to this, like cemeteries. Isaac's grandparents are at a stunning location high on a mountain's side, overlooking a wide valley and surrounded by many other soft peaks. We have visited a few times before, and I was blown away with the place's special feeling and beauty.

Here are two pictures of the cemetery from one of our previous visits. Notice the empty mountains all around, and the neat rows of landscaping and granite stones. It feels more like a garden then a graveside.

This Lunar New Year was my first time visiting Isaac's grandparents on a major Korean holiday. As we left Isaac's father's place in the morning, the wide city streets were deserted. But on the countryside's two lane roads winding up to the cemetery, there was heavy traffic. Many families were travelling together to visit the resting place of their loved ones.

Here was our view this time from the graveside. In the valley you can see the rectangles of different types of farms. I remember passing orchards, ducks, cattle and all sorts of vegetable farms.

Here is the place honoring Isaac's grandparents. I took this photo when we were about to leave; Isaac's father had already taken some of the food to throw into the woods nearby for the animals. From what I've heard, his grandparents were animal lovers and would appreciate the gesture, and I think we all know that Isaac inherited this trait as well.

So you bring all of these foods, pick up some fresh (fake, of course) flowers, light incense (it's stuck in the ground to the left below the flowers) and pour glasses of soju for the Grandparents. It's like preparing a feast them. Then you bow to each as a way of honoring and remembering them. We eat a bit of the food, this time crunching on the chestnuts. Then we poured the soju on grave, the left side for Isaac's grandfather and right side for grandmother.

Even high up on the mountain, we saw several other families gathered around the granite monuments of their relatives. Below you can get a vague picture of a family with many different foods spread out, a mat on the ground for bowing and sprinkling soju over the grave. I saw many young children in puffy jackets participating, a cute sight as they bowed or toted the food to and from cars.

Before experiencing it myself, this tradition seemed a little scary to me. Bowing before a grave seemed strange, like ancestor worship. But after talking with Isaac and now having the opportunity to participate myself, I think it is a beautiful way to honor and remember family. In the western world, it seems like bowing is only used as a means of expressing servitude, like bowing before royalty or a god. Yet it is so much more in eastern countries - it's used everyday to meet and greet others; it can show respect, gratitude, apology and humility. I feel so much gratitude towards the grandparents of my husband. Participating in this tradition, even if I am very much a child of the language and culture, feels special and satisfying.

I often think of deceased loved ones, and my family is always sharing stories or memories with and about them. We all surely agree that we still feel their presence - whether it's through a familiar facial feature like a lopsided smile, voice intonations or memories. But there isn't a set time or day that we dedicate so clearly to remembering them and everything they've done for us. It's a neat idea.

Our Korean New Year ended with more family and food. Isaac's aunt invited us to eat dinner at her place. She met us at the elevator of her apartment, and as soon as we walked in, she insisted we sit down and start enjoying the food. I took this picture of what was already waiting on the table; she was still cooking more. Even though I can not speak or understand Korean very well, sharing food and time together made me feel so welcome and like part of the family. I feel inspired to learn how to make more Korean cuisine too, so that next time maybe I can chip in with the cooking.

Once we arrived home from our holiday festivities, I looked back through the photos I had taken from this time. Other than a few landscape photos like this one below with a white egret standing frozen in an icy river, all of the pictures include food of one sort or another. I didn't even take any pictures of us, just the food we shared and ate together.

And so that led me to my current summary about this special time of year. My big takeaway from Korean New Years is that it's all about preparing, sharing and enjoying food with family. Whether it's giving a spam set, cooking lunch or presenting food to honor ancestors, it's the warm combination of family and food.