Happy Chuseok!

What is Chuseok?

Chuseok (Korean: 추석), originally known as Hangawi (한가위) (from archaic Korean for "great middle"), is a major harvest festival and a three-day holiday in Korea celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar. Like many other harvest festivals, it is held around the Autumn Equinox. As a celebration of the good harvest, Koreans visit their ancestral hometowns and share a feast of Korean traditional food.

Thank you, Wikki.

Basically, Chuseok is like our Thanksgiving in the United States. This week we will enjoy a 3-day holiday for the Chuseok celebration. While most of our friends, Western and Korean, are traveling away to local (hometowns) and distant lands, we will be here, in Dongbaek.

The stores are filled with shoppers preparing to buy gifts and foods for the week long celebration. A friend shared with me last week that when she was young it was part of the Chuseok tradition for parents to buy children new shoes and clothes for Chuseok. Korea is now a prospering nation but in it's past there has been a lot of hardship. Today, Korea seems like a fashion capital but in the not so distant past a new pair of shoes was a huge deal.

For many families they will purchase fruit or other practical items to give as Chuseok gifts. In every store you visit in the weeks leading up to Chuseok stores are selling huge gift boxes. These boxes contain things like; Spam, lotion, fruit juices, cooking oils or boxes of ginseng.







The other day a friend came over for dinner and brought us a huge box of grapes--there were at least 20 little bushels of grapes. They said, "Happy Chuseok! We want you to experience what it is like in Korea to celebrate the holiday!"

It would be really awesome to celebrate with a Korean family. When I mentioned this to a friend she said, "Oh, Kimberly, you don't want to do that. It is crazy and stressful." I laughed because I understand what it's like to have large family gatherings--cooking, cleaning and lots of people in small spaces. I still think it would be interesting to go but in Korea it's not as commmon to invite non-family friends to family functions.

Happy Chuseok from Korea!