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| Visiting the Ancestor Graves for Chuseok |
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Read and Listen: Chuseok: Thanksgiving Festival Korea
This year, exceptionally, the Korean Foundation Day holiday and
Chusok (Korean Thanksgiving)
both occur in the same week, which
translates into a week's holiday for a lot of people.
October 3, National Foundation
Day, marks the legendary founding of
Korea by the god-king "Tan-gun" in 2333 B.C. and is a celebration of
national
pride in the country's over 5000 year history. Chusok, which
this year falls on 5, 6 and 7 October literally means `Bountiful
Abundance' and is a time for rejoicing in the fruits of the harvest –
as does the North American Thanksgiving
holidays. The Korean holiday
is always on the 15th ay of the 8th lunar month – Friday 6 October
this year.
How
Chusok Started
http://sayandpost.com/sa4pn4jxx11.mp3
Some of the Korean Chusok traditions date back to a king of the
Shilla Dynasty who organized the women from six towns
into two teams
for a yearly weaving competition. The competitors had a month in
which to prepare the hemp, spin it
and weave it into cloth. The King
and Queen would then choose the team whose product they preferred,
with the losers
having to prepare a feast for the winners. The
competition was fierce, but in the end everyone got to enjoy the food
and
a great time was had by all. Not surprisingly, many of today's
Chusok rituals involve food.
What
People Do for Chusok
Chusok is, first and foremost, a time for family – past and present.
Family members
are all expected to return to the birth village of
their clan to pay homage to their ancestors and to celebrate with
their
relatives.
Chusok Rituals
However, for the majority of Koreans, Chusok continues to be a time
of traditional
rituals, the first of which involves visiting the
family tomb to cut the grass and spruce up the area. This is
sometimes
done just before the holiday if the site is not to far from
where they live. On Chusok morning, the family will lay out
food for
their ancestors – grilled fish, vegetables and/or meat and broth.
Dressed in their new hanboks (or
a modern version of it call
Chusokbim), they then perform a memorial service in which they wish
good fortune to their
deceased family members and bring them up to
date on their descendants' activities. The food offerings are later
eaten
by the family members.
Traditional Chusok Foods
Just as in other harvest
festivals around the world, food plays an
important part in Chusok traditions. Newly harvested rice and
songpyun are
an integral part of the festivities and women begin
preparing the traditional dishes days in advance. Were you to visit
a
Korean family a few days before Chusok, you might find several
generations of women working in a big circle shaping
rice dough
filled with toasted sesame seeds, chestnuts, red beans, dates or
honey/sugar sweetened peas into half-moon
shapes. The songpyun (rice
cakes-tteok) would then be carefully arranged between piles of
freshly washed pine needles
in a huge steamer – the pine needles
prevent the sticky rice cakes from sticking to each other and to the
pot,
while also acting as a natural preservative
Speaking Task: Read your answers to the Recorder
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National Foundation Day is a National Celebration which remembers the Foundation of Korea in
2333 BC
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Chuseok is the Korean Thanksgiving Festival
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For Chusok I went to ..................................
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I travelled by ............................................
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My family .....................................................
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The food was ...............................................
| Traditional Clothes for the Chuseok Feast |
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