In Korean culture, everyone gets a year older on New Years Day.
Eating the rice cakes in the soup symbolizes that collective aging.
Simply Recipes / Hennie Haworth
Lunar New Year was not always my favorite holiday.
Simply Recipes / Hennie Haworth
Growing up, my parents would wake us up in the cold winter dawn.
There would be a lot of bowing and fussingstuff I never fully understood as a young child.
All that ritual in front of a bunch of dead relatives felt a little morbid to me.
In a Confucian society, lineage was super important, and family was everything.
As a child, I understood nothing of this.
Still, I loved to see my cousins.
It was always the same old thing about getting good grades, listening to our parents, etc.
Now I know why the elders always told us the same thing.
They could barely remember our names, let alone give us any proper sage advice.
One of my uncles would say that we are eating another year.
In Korean culture, everyone gets a year older on New Years Day.
Eating the rice cakes in the soup symbolizes that collective aging.
To this day, our family gets together every New Year for saebae.
I struggle to not tell them to get better grades and listen to their parents.
What kind of wisdom can I impart to the younger generation in a 5-minute ritual only once a year?
