Korean New Year, commonly known as Seollal (Hangul: 설날; RR: Seollal; MR: Sǒllal), is the first day of the lunar Korean calendar. It is the most important of the traditional Korean holidays. It consists of a period of celebrations, starting on New Year's Day. The Korean also celebrate solar New Year's Day on January 1 each year, following the Gregorian Calendar. The Korean New Year holidays last three days, and is considered a more important holiday than the solar New Year's Day. ^[1]

The term "Seollal" generally refers to Eum-nyeok Seollal (음력설날, lunar new year), also known as Gujeong (Hangul: 구정; Hanja: 舊正). Less commonly, "Seollal" also refers to Yang-nyeok Seollal (양력설날, solar new year), also known as Sinjeong (Hangul: 신정).

Korean New Year generally falls on the day of the second new moon after winter solstice, unless there is a very rare intercalary eleventh or twelfth month in the lead-up to the New Year. In such a case, the New Year falls on the day of the third new moon after the solstice (next occurrence will be 2033). Korean New Year is generally the same day as Mongolian New Year, Tibetan New Year, Chinese New Year and Vietnamese New Year.

[edit] Customs

Korean New Year is typically a family-oriented holiday. Many Koreans tend to gather for this joyous event and have a large dinner. The general procedure for this dinner is they spend a day of preparing the food, a day of eating, and a day of leisure. For the day of preparation for the food, they usually take preserved spicy vegetables called Kimchi and stuff the turkey with it and marinate it in chicken droppings. For the day of eating, they spend approximately half of the day cooking since they prepared most of it the day before. However, the turkey must be prepared very precisely, where they put the turkey on a seesaw and jump on the other end so as the turkey flies straight up into the air and the family must run around with a baking pan and try to catch the turkey. If they fail to catch it, the korean gods curse them with a bad new year. On the day of leisure, they take turns throwing rice balls at each other until anyone is entirely covered with rice.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Seollal (Korean New Year)
• Seollal fête — A stunning visual of Korean culture, The Arkansas Traveler
• Seollal, Lunar New Year's Day, Tour2Korea.com
• Korean Festival: SEOL - LUNAR NEW YEAR : the Most Important Korean Holidays