Chusok, the Korean Thanksgiving

[ClosetOtaku]

I'm sitting in my apartment, watching the southbound traffic crawl across the bridges of the Han River, as the people of Seoul leave for their ancestral homes to celebrate Chusok.

Chusok is Korean Thanksgiving, and has much of the same hallmarks as our own holiday. This year, it falls on the 28th of September, but Monday and Wednesday are also red-letter days, making this essentially a 5-day weekend.

While Korea is a country of about 45 million people, almost one-third have gone north and live in the greater Seoul area. Around Chusok, this trend reverses, and families will drive hours to distant cities like Busan, Daegu, or Kwangju to the places where their families have lived, some for generations.

The holiday celebrates family togetherness and honors the ancestors (both living and dead). There are many traditions associated with the holiday, a few of which I'll try to describe as best I can, as they were explained to me by those who participate in them. Some of the activities owe their roots to ancestor worship that is a large part of religion is Asia. Today, about one-third of the South Korean population is Christian, and while this has had an effect on how the holiday is celebrated, many of the traditional practices remain.

On the morning of Chusok the children are awakened early and brought into the company of the adults, where all honor the (usually patriarchal) line of ancestors. A very large meal is set out consisting of a wide variety of traditional Korean foods. It is not unusual to have four (or even five) generations under one roof in this setting.

Later that day, the families will go out to the family grave sites for both ritual and practical purposes. Unlike in the West, where we have large and sometimes ornate cemeteries, these grave sites are singular, usually on sides of hills, decorated with a few modest stone markers, and the graves themselves are small burial mounds. You can see them dot the countryside as you drive along any number of routes.

The families will leave behind food or pour out drink (soju, an alcoholic beverage, is one example) at the sites, in honor of the ancestors, much like we would leave flowers or other memorabilia. They also use the time to tidy up the gravesites, cutting down weeds and removing fallen rubble.

The holiday often ends like it began -- very long highway drives as all of Korea tries to get back to their current hometowns, most in the Seoul area, and experiencing perhaps one of the largest anticipated traffic jams in all the world.

There are many other elements to the holiday that I'm not as familiar with, and you can find out about them from the Internet if you're interested.

I was hesitant to post this to CAA, since some of these practices, while well-intentioned, seem to border on the pagan. Yet that's not the impression I get when I talk to people here about the holiday -- they focus on family reunion and visiting their parents and grandparents. I've found it to be a widely-celebrated and eagerly anticipated holiday for many people, including many Christians, and it has made me wonder why I can gloss over pagan elements of my own Christmas celebrations (the Christmas Tree, for example) while feeling obligated to scrutinize others. I admire the Koreans in the dedication they show to their elders. And it might be nice if I saw more of such dedication in my own culture as well.

[termyt]

Well said, ClosetOtaku. Thanks for sharing and the insite, too.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

i forgot about it.... oh boy... that's not good. I think my friend yesterday, did that, forgot which holiday. In honor of his grandmother who passed away? Im not sure if he said she did or not.

(im korean, if ya didn't know ^_^)

[c-girl]

>^^< That's cool. Thank you so much for sharing!

[Jaltus-bot]

I think that is a good point about our own culture. I know that my parents have mentioned things about how it's harder now as middle aged baby-boomers. When my dad got laid off, it was only the old experienced people that his company was getting rid of, probably to save money. It's important to consider what our elders can teach us from their experience, than again, the way our society works could also be more condusive towards forging bonds between parents and children, at least in my opinion for what I have seen.