1, say goodbye to the old and welcome the new
Koreans have been celebrating the Spring Festival since Silla era. In Korea, it is the second largest festival after the Mid-Autumn Festival.
When do Koreans celebrate the New Year? Every household should prepare a lot of glutinous rice cakes and distribute them to neighbors and relatives. From the beginning of this custom, there has been a saying of "eating cakes in the New Year". It is said that rice cakes contain sincerity, love and filial piety, symbolizing a happy New Year. The most important activity of the Spring Festival is to offer sacrifices to ancestors to remember their virtues and inherit their wishes. Its ancestor worship procedures are strict, and there are some rules for setting the table, such as "fish in the east and meat in the west", "head in the east and tail in the west", "red in the east and white in the west", "jujube, pear and persimmon are cooked in the west" and "left rice and right soup". After ancestor worship, the younger generation should pay New Year greetings to their elders. Those who have a family funeral, or who have served for three years, do not pay New Year's greetings.
When visiting the New Year, the elders should give the younger generation lucky money, and give the lucky fence (a spoon-shaped filtering tool) with the meaning of "pretending to be lucky" to others or hang it at home. During the Spring Festival, people greet each other with "Happy New Year". For those homeless people who can't go home for the New Year or sleep on the street, civic organizations celebrate the Spring Festival for them and let them feel the warmth of their extended family.
Koreans often give gifts to each other during the Spring Festival. There are many kinds of gifts, most of which are wrapped in soft and gorgeous paper such as tender pink.
Because most Koreans spend the Spring Festival at home, most hotels are closed during the Spring Festival.
In South Korea, as in China, there is a custom of going home for the New Year. The family dressed in colorful hanbok and drove to their hometown, which constituted a typical Korean holiday custom map. The penetration rate of private cars in Korea is very high. If you drive back to your hometown for the New Year, you may still have the feeling of returning home in clothes and worshipping your ancestors. Koreans call it "returning home" to visit relatives during the Spring Festival.
In South Korea, during the Spring Festival, families get together to play a game called Utz (equivalent to throwing twelve elephants in China). Women play springboard jumping. It is said that they jumped the springboard in the first month and won't prick their feet for a year. In addition, there is the custom of exorcising ghosts. On New Year's Day, at dusk, the forbidden line is pulled at the door, loess is scattered and firecrackers are set off. Hide your children's shoes when you sleep, so as not to be stolen by ghosts. In recent years, some Koreans have taken advantage of the Spring Festival holiday to spend a lively Spring Festival in ski resorts.
2. Yuan is full of expectations for the Festival.
Koreans call the fifteenth day of the first month Lantern Festival or Shangyuan Festival, and some people call it Lantern Festival, but they don't have the habit of eating Yuanxiao. The fifteenth day of the first month is the first full moon at the beginning of the new year. Like China people, Koreans pray for prosperity and peace in the new year. Eat peanuts, chestnuts, walnuts and other nuts on this day and drink "Erming wine". Koreans eat whole grains and wild vegetables made of rice, glutinous rice, adzuki beans, soybeans and sorghum for breakfast, and call each other by their first names. The other party responded "You buy my fever", saying that they will not suffer from heatstroke all summer in the new year. It is said that all three wishes made on the full moon tonight will come true. Korean folk activities are mostly concentrated on the fifteenth day of the first month, which is closely related to the form of praying for a bumper harvest. Representative folk activities include flying kites, tug-of-war, car-fighting games, stepping on copper bridges, and garden parties. In addition, there are "set fire to mice" to drive away monsters and pests, among which the wildfire festival in Jeju Road is the most famous.
3. Beautiful Dragon Boat Festival
Dragon Boat Festival, also known as Duanyang Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Day Festival, is a day to pray for a bumper harvest after transplanting rice.
East Asian countries celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival with slightly different customs. China has the custom of eating zongzi, but Japan and South Korea don't. Japanese celebrate Dragon Boat Festival, men swim and women wash their hair. In Korea, men wrestle and women wash their hair with calamus leaves and swing? I also eat a wheel cake like a wheel made of mugwort leaves-mugwort leaves cake. Therefore, South Korea also calls the Dragon Boat Festival the Wheel Festival.
Koreans never deny that the Dragon Boat Festival, which prayed for a bumper harvest and good health during the agricultural society, originated in China. During the Li Dynasty, the Dragon Boat Festival was considered a big festival. Today, some agricultural counties in South Korea are still regarded as important festivals, especially "Gangneung Daye Festival", which has become a traditional large-scale folk festival with public participation. "Sacrifice" refers to both sacrifice and celebration. In fact, the Dragon Boat Festival was originally a ritual activity in China. In addition to swinging, wrestling, bowing, making up, taekwondo, college football and performing agricultural music and dance, Gangneung Daye Festival also has unique sacrificial activities, including offering sacrifices to mountain gods, Dionysus, performing witchcraft and cutting down sacred trees. Sacrificial activities have a complete set of procedures, and both welcoming and sending gods are presided over by special sacrificial officials. Koreans believe that Gangneung's distinctive Dragon Boat Festival sacrifices and celebrations are not the "Dragon Boat Festival" in the general sense. 1967, "gangneung danoje festival" was approved by the Korean government as the national No.1 13 "Important Intangible Cultural Heritage" to be protected. It attracts a large number of domestic and foreign tourists to participate in sightseeing every year, and also lets people know about Korean folk customs. In 2005125 October, 165438, the "gangneung danoje festival" declared by South Korea was officially recognized as "the representative of the oral and intangible heritage of mankind" by UNESCO.
4. Mid-Autumn Festival for family reunion
"The moon is now full of the sea, and the end of the world is at this time." The Mid-Autumn Festival on August 15 of the lunar calendar every year retains China's unique cultural feelings of missing relatives, which reflects the traditional virtue of "patriotism and love for home" in the Mid-Autumn Festival since ancient times.
Mid-Autumn Festival is not only a festival in China, but also a traditional festival in Korea and Japan. Koreans also call Mid-Autumn Festival "Autumn Night" or "Thanksgiving Day". South Korea has inherited the tradition of Chinese cultural circle, and the Mid-Autumn Festival has become the most important festival in a year. The whole country has a five-day holiday, and some companies use continuous holidays to make employees' holidays longer. Koreans attach great importance to filial piety, and whether children can go home to visit their parents and elders during the Mid-Autumn Festival is an important measure of their filial piety. So in Korea, no matter where you are or how busy you are, you have to go back to your family for the Mid-Autumn Festival. This way is quite like the Spring Festival in China. So near the Mid-Autumn Festival, there are more than 30 million people on the road in South Korea with a population of more than 40 million, and the expressway has become an ocean of cars. An hour usually takes five or six hours or more. After the family reunion on the day of "Autumn Evening", people dressed in beautiful hanbok began to hold a grand sacrificial ceremony, and put all kinds of delicious food carefully prepared and purchased, such as beef, fish, persimmons and nuts, in front of the ancestral tablets to show their respect for their ancestors. Then go to the grave to pay homage to relatives, and then later generations kowtow to the elders at home and enjoy a good meal together.
In the evening, Koreans, like China people, will come out to enjoy the moon, and Korean women will gather in the moonlight, singing and dancing "Qiang Qiang Shui Yue". It is said that this dance originated at the end of 16. At that time, in order to resist Japanese aggression (known as the "War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea" in China's history), navy star Li Shunchen, considering the shortage of coastal defense forces, made women dance in groups around the bonfire at night to confuse the enemy and make him mistakenly think that there were heavy troops guarding the coast.
Mid-Autumn Festival is a festival in China and South Korea, and its origin is also closely related to China. However, in the process of acceptance, digestion and absorption, the customs and dietary customs of South Korea's Mid-Autumn Festival are different from those of China: the main activity of South Korea's Mid-Autumn Festival is to sweep graves to thank ancestors for their bumper harvest, while China is to sweep graves by Tomb-Sweeping Day; South Korea's Mid-Autumn Festival dinner is breakfast, and China's dinner is dinner; Koreans don't eat moon cakes like people in China, but special muffins. Mid-Autumn Festival is not a legal holiday in China, but there are five days' holidays in Korea, which is the longest holiday in a year.