Saturday, February 9, 2013

Korean New Year

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_New_Year

Korean New Year

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Korean New Year
Korean New Year
Traditional game tuho being played.
Also called Lunar New Year
Observed by Korean people around the world
Type Korean, cultural, Buddhist
Significance The first day of the Korean calendar (lunar calendar)
2012 date January 23
2013 date February 10
2014 date January 31
Related to Mongolian New Year, Tibetan New Year, Japanese New Year, Chinese New Year, Vietnamese New Year
Korean New Year, commonly known as Seollal (Hangul: 설날; RR: Seollal; MR: Sŏllal), is the first day of the lunar calendar. It is the most important of the traditional Korean holidays. It consists of a period of celebrations, starting on New Year's Day. Koreans also celebrate solar New Year's Day on January 1 each year, following the Gregorian Calendar. The Korean New Year holiday lasts three days, and is considered a more important holiday than the solar New Year's Day.[1]
The term "Seollal" generally refers to Eumnyeok Seollal (음력 설날, lunar new year), also known as Gujeong (Hangul: 구정; Hanja: 舊正). Less commonly, "Seollal" also refers to Yangnyeok Seollal (양력 설날, solar new year), also known as Sinjeong (Hangul: 신정; Hanja: 新正).
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; the next occurrence of this will be in 2033.

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Customs

Korean new Year is typically a family holiday. The three-day holiday is used by many to return to their hometowns to visit their parents and other relatives, where they perform an ancestral ritual. Many Koreans dress up in colorful traditional Korean clothing called hanbok. But nowadays, small families tend to become less formal and wear other formal clothing instead of hanbok.

Tteokguk

Tteokguk (떡국) (soup with sliced rice cakes) is a traditional Korean food that is customarily eaten for the New Year. According to Korean age reckoning, the Korean New Year is similar to a birthday for Koreans, and eating Tteokguk is part of the birthday celebration. Once you finish eating your Tteokguk, you are one year older.

Sebae

Sebae is a traditionally observed activity on Seollal, and is filial-piety-oriented. Children wish their elders (grandparents, aunts and uncles, parents) a happy new year by performing one deep traditional bow (rites with more than one bow involved are usually for the deceased) and the words saehae bok mani badeuseyo (Hangul: 새해 복 많이 받으세요) which translates to Receive many New Year blessings, or more loosely, "Have a blessed New Year." Parents typically reward this gesture by giving their children new year's money, or "pocket money," (usually in the form of crisp paper money) in luck bags made with beautiful silk design and offering words of wisdom, deokdam. Historically, parents gave out rice cakes (ddeok) and fruit to their children instead. Before and during the bowing ceremony, children wear hanboks as a respectful way to appreciate ancestors and elders.

Folk games

Many traditional games are associated with the Korean New Year. The traditional family board game yunnori (윷놀이) is still a popular game nowadays. Yut Nori(Yunnori) is a traditional board game played in Korea, especially during Korean New Year. It is played using different types of specially designed sticks. Traditionally men and boys would fly rectangle kites called yeonnalligi, and play jegi chagi (제기차기), a game in which a light object is wrapped in paper or cloth, and then kicked in a footbag like manner. Korean women and girls would have traditionally played neolttwigi (널뛰기), a game of jumping on a seesaw (시소), and gongginolie, game played with five little gonggi (originally a little stone, but today many buy manufactured gongi in shops) while children spin paengi (팽이).


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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice


Winter solstice

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UT date and time of
equinoxes and solstices on Earth[1]
event Northward
equinox
Northern
solstice
Southward
equinox
Southern
solstice
month March June September December
year
day time day time day time day time
2010 20 17:32 21 11:28 23 03:09 21 23:38
2011 20 23:21 21 17:16 23 09:04 22 05:30
2012 20 05:14 20 23:09 22 14:49 21 11:12
2013 20 11:02 21 05:04 22 20:44 21 17:11
2014 20 16:57 21 10:51 23 02:29 21 23:03
2015 20 22:45 21 16:38 23 08:20 22 04:48
2016 20 04:30 20 22:34 22 14:21 21 10:44
2017 20 10:28 21 04:24 22 20:02 21 16:28
2018 20 16:15 21 10:07 23 01:54 21 22:23
2019 20 21:58 21 15:54 23 07:50 22 04:19
2020 20 03:50 20 21:44 22 13:31 21 10:02
Winter solstice in Northern Hemisphere.
The winter solstice is the solstice that occurs in winter. It is the time at which the sun appears at noon at its lowest altitude above the horizon.[2] In the Northern Hemisphere this is the Southern solstice, the time at which the Sun is at its southernmost point in the sky, which usually occurs on December 21 to 22 each year.[3]
In the Southern Hemisphere this is the Northern solstice, the time at which the Sun is at its northernmost point in the sky, which usually occurs on June 20 to 21 each year.[4]
The axial tilt of Earth and gyroscopic effects of the planet's daily rotation keep the axis of rotation pointed at the same point in the sky. As the Earth follows its orbit around the Sun, the same hemisphere that faced away from the Sun, experiencing winter, will, in half a year, face towards the Sun and experience summer. Since the two hemispheres face opposite directions along the planetary pole, as one polar hemisphere experiences winter, the other experiences summer.
More evident from high latitudes, a hemisphere's winter solstice occurs on the shortest day and longest night of the year, when the sun's daily maximum elevation in the sky is the lowest.[5] Since the winter solstice lasts only a moment in time, other terms are often used for the day on which it occurs, such as "midwinter", "the longest night", "the shortest day" or "the first day of winter". The seasonal significance of the winter solstice is in the reversal of the gradual lengthening of nights and shortening of days. The earliest sunset and latest sunrise dates differ from winter solstice, however, and these depend on latitude, due to the variation in the solar day throughout the year caused by the Earth's elliptical orbit, see earliest and latest sunrise and sunset.
Worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied from culture to culture, but most Northern Hemisphere cultures have held a recognition of rebirth, involving holidays, festivals, gatherings, rituals or other celebrations around that time.[6]


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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tteokguk

Tteokguk

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Tteokguk
Korean.food-Tteok.mandu.guk-01.jpg
Origin
Place of origin Korea
Details
Type Tteok
Main ingredient(s) Broth (beef, chicken, pork, pheasant, or seafood; soy sauce), garaetteok
Other information Traditional for Korean New Year
Tteokguk
Hangul 떡국
Revised Romanization tteokguk
McCune–Reischauer ttŏkkuk
Tteokguk is a traditional Korean dish eaten during the celebration of the Korean New Year. The dish consists of the broth/soup (guk) with thinly sliced rice cakes (tteok - it can be called a kind of rice pasta). It is tradition to eat tteokguk on New Year's Day because it is believed to grant the consumer luck for the forthcoming year and gain an additional year of life. It is usually garnished with thin julienned cooked eggs, marinated meat, and gim.[1]

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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_age_reckoning

East Asian age reckoning

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  (Redirected from Korean age reckoning)
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Dol, the traditional way of celebrating a birthday of a one-year old child in South Korea.
East Asian age reckoning is a concept and practice that originated in China and is widely used by other cultures in East Asia and Vietnam, which share this traditional way of counting a person's age. Newborns start at one year old, and each passing of a Lunar New Year, rather than the birthday, adds one year to the person's age. In other words, the first year of life is counted as one instead of zero, so that a person is two years old in their second year, three years old in their third, and so on.[1][2] Since age is incremented on the new year rather than on a birthday, people may be 1 or 2 years older in Asian reckoning than in the Western system.
The system is also widely used by South Koreans, with the exception of the legal system. In Eastern Outer Mongolia, age is traditionally determined based on the number of full moons since conception for girls, and the number of new moons since birth for boys. In Japan and Vietnam it is used for traditional fortune-telling or religion, but it is disappearing in daily life among people in the city.


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