Celebrating Chuseok
Its not often you get to celebrate Thanksgiving in September unless of course you are celebrating Korea’s Thanksgiving which is known as Chuseok. Chuseok is a major three-day holiday in Korea celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar Korean calendar. It is a celebration of the good harvest.
In modern South Korea, on Chuseok there is a mass exodus of Koreans returning to their hometowns to pay respects to the spirits of one’s ancestors. People perform ancestral worship rituals early in the morning. They often visit the tombs of their immediate ancestors to trim plants and clean the area around the tomb, and offer food, drink, and crops to their ancestors. Harvest crops are attributed to the blessing of ancestors. One of the major foods prepared and eaten during the Chuseok holiday is songpyeon (송편), a crescent-shaped rice cake which is steamed upon pine needles.
While we had pine needles we did not have any rice cakes so we were not able to cook any songpyeon; however with the help of our son John we did cook some Korean barbeque beef, pork and shrimp along with rice served with lettuce. We also prepared a traditional plate of fruit in celebration of a good harvest and in thanksgiving to the Lord for all his provisisons.