Everyone loves the New Year; people worldwide have their own ways to celebrate this beautiful holiday. There are several types of New Year celebrations around the world. For example, some people celebrate Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year, which begins during the spring harvest season. A married couple will give money to individuals in a red envelope who are single or young, and people within these cultures also eat egg-filled mooncakes together. In Bali, Indonesia, Hindus celebrate Nyepi. It is based on the first day of the lunar-based Saka Calendar. You will find everything is closed aside from hospitals on the island because Nyepi is a day of silence, fasting, and meditation.
Seollal (설날), Korean New Year, is also a day of great significance for Koreans around the world. They celebrate Seollal for 3 days, and the holidays will start before, during, and the day after the New Year. Before Seollal, everyone gets busy preparing everything, and they buy great quantities of food to serve and gifts to give to each other. The traffic in South Korea is usually very hectic because people are traveling to meet their families. There are a lot of gift options that you can get from supermarkets or department stores. The most popular gifts are cash or a gift card. It is also typical to give ginseng, massage chairs, or health products to your parents. While, for the young people, you can provide them with toiletry gift sets or gift sets composed of Korean food such as Spam, Hangwa (한과), traditional sweets and cookies, and Hanu (하누), which is Korean beef.
Everyone celebrates their respective traditions at almost the same time as the Western New Year based on the Gregorian calendar. At the end of December, either the 30th or 31st, people spend their time with family to enjoy beautiful fireworks in the sky to greet the 1st of January.
In other countries, people have similarly diverse ways of celebrating the New Year. In Denmark, there are two traditions people do to celebrate the New Year: throwing old plates and glasses against the doors to take away the bad spirits and standing on chairs to jump off of together at midnight in hopes of good luck. In Japan and South Korea, they ring bells to mark it as a New Year. Meanwhile, in some South American countries, people on New Year's Eve walk around while bringing along an empty suitcase, because they believe it will bring them to a year full of adventures ahead.
You will also find people eating 12 grapes, one at each stroke of the clock at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Spain. The Spanish believe that each grape that they eat will bring them luck in the New Year. Meanwhile, in Brazil, they eat lentils to celebrate the New Year. This, too, is a ritual to bring about good fortune for the year ahead, because lentils represent money in their belief system.
Countries have signature dishes for the New Year, and Seollal is no different. There are Tteokguk (떡국) and Jeon (전).
Tteokguk, a rice cake soup, is a signature dish that you will find during Seollal. The shape of tteokguk is like an old-style Korean coin to represent health and long life. The ingredients for the tteokguk are rice cakes, beef, vegetables, and eggs.
Jeon (전) is another special food you can find on the table at the event. Jeon is a Korean pancake that contains meat, seafood, or vegetables. Besides the food, there is one drink that is served as a dessert.
Sikhye (식혜) is made by pouring malt onto cooked rice. You will need to gently remove the liquid and then leave the rougher parts. After that, you boil the rougher parts then drink them. People believe that Sikhye will help with digestion, so they drink it at the end of the meal.
In Japan, to celebrate New Year, you will find people eating buckwheat soba noodles, or Toshikoshi Soba, in the middle of the night on New Year’s eve. The Japanese people believe that long noodles symbolize longevity and prosperity.
They also spend the day before New Year's Eve making Mochitsuki. The family will make it together by pounding mochi rice cakes. After that, they wash and soak the glutinous and sweetness from the rice, and then they steam and pound it into a smooth mass. In the end, they will pinch off and make them into small buns so they can eat it as a dessert.
If you travel to Mexico City, a common food that you will find is Tamales. It is a corn dough with meat, cheese, and other delicious things inside and wrapped in a banana leaf or a corn husk.
BTS even had a special episode for Seollal or Lunar New Year. You can play these games with people that you love. There are 2 games that you can try, which are Yut Nori (윷놀이) and Jegichagi (제기차기).
Yut Nori (윷놀이), also called Yut, is a board game. The board of the game is called malpan (말판), which is typically made of fabric, paper, plastic, or even wood. The 4 sticks as dice for this Korean monopoly is called Jangjak Yut (장작윷). The markers in this game are called four mal (말), which also means horse in Korean. There are buttons, small stones, or coins for each player.
Jegichagi (제기차기) is a game where you kick the jegi (제기), an object that closely resembles a shuttlecock, in the air and make sure it will not land on the ground. The player who gets the highest number of kicks will win the game. There are two different versions of this game. One is Ddangganghji (땅강아지), where your foot needs to touch the ground after each kick, and the other is Hullangyi (헐랭이), which is the opposite of Ddangganghji; your food cannot touch the ground after kicking the jegi.
If you are wondering how to play Yut Nori and Jegichagi, go check out how the boys play it.
There are a lot of New Years' celebrations in this world. No matter what kind of New Year holiday that we celebrate, we always share the day with the people that we love in our home.
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Written By: Endang
Edit By: Cassie
Checked By: Aury
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