published in Korea.net: Celebrating New Year’s Eve in the Philippines

I recently had a fantastic chance to personally learn how to cook Korea’s two Lunar New Year must-eats, the tteokguk and the mandu guk. Four Honorary Reporters were invited to the Hana Go Lunar New Year episode and we delighted at how Professor Sook Ja Yoon, Director of the Institute of Traditional Korean Food, prepared and garnished dishes that are otherwise ordinary. Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Colombia and the Philippines were represented and together with Hana of HanaGo, we watched, tasted the dishes and came to know some interesting facts about the Lunar New Year dishes and practices of Korea.

The experience gave me a timely opportunity to take a good look at the New Year celebrations of Korea and my home country, the Philippines.

New Year Celebrations

In the Philippines, we celebrate the New Year with a big bang to welcome the first day of the Gregorian calendar which is January 1. This is a major celebration and the families get together on the night of December 31 for a countdown and wait until the clock strikes 12, signaling the New year. Some families go out and join crowds for a countdown and while waiting, fireworks are all over town. Although, these days fireworks have been limited to some areas only.

The Philippines also celebrates the Lunar New Year but it is commonly called as the Chinese New Year. Not surprising as trade and migration firmly established a Chinese population in the Philippines. In fact, the first Chinatown, located in Binondo, was established in 1594. The Chinese New Year is not as widely celebrated and as big as the January 1 New Year that majority of the Filipinos celebrate. 

Korea welcomes the New Year or the Seollal following the Lunar calendar, which this 2019 falls on the 5^th of February. It is one of Korea’s most special of celebrations. Families gather and catch up on each other but what makes it a truly special occasion for Koreans is this is an occasion when they perform ancestral rites to pay their respect to their ancestors through a ceremony called 차례 or charye. The celebration is quieter and more private among families.

New Year Dishes

Preparing the tteokguk and mandu guk with Professor Sook Ja Yoon was a personal learning experience for me. I realized I had been cooking mandu guk the wrong way!

And do you know that tteokguk is preferred in the South while mandu guk is a preference in the North?  Tteokguk is a white tteok made of rice. Rice is more abundant in the South that’s why it is the preferred dish. Rice is not as abundant in the North because of the climate and the land so the North prefers to have mandu guk.

You can see the thinly sliced white tteok in the tteokguk but it is originally a long, cylindrical tteok. Here are what I learned from our HanaGo experience straight from Professor Yoon:

• The long white tteok symbolizes long life for the new year.
• The color white stands for cleanliness and purity so eating this white tteok makes the Koreans welcome the New Year clean and pure.
• The tteok is round and coin-like to resemble yeopjeon, Korea’s old currency. This symbolizes prosperity for the coming New Year.

In the Philippines, we welcome the New Year with our noodle dishes like our traditional dish called pancit or any kind of pasta to symbolize long life and good fortune. Some families practice eating food made with sticky rice like bibingka (a type of baked rice cake), and biko (sweet rice cake). These dishes are meant to make families stick to each other and make their family bond stronger.

I grew up seeing my mom gather 12 kinds of fruits to welcome the New Year and make these as the centerpiece of our New Year table or medya noche. These fruits should preferably be round or oval and they symbolize abundance for each month of the new year.

It is a Korean tradition to buy a bamboo strainer or a bokjori (복조리) in the morning of the Seollal. This is used for washing rice before cooking. They should hang the bokjori on the higher part of the wall. It is believed to bring good luck and fortune. It should also be bought the earliest possible time as it is supposed to bring larger fortune to the family.

New Year Rituals

There is another Korean belief that ghosts would visit houses to steal shoes on the eve of the Seollal. When your shoe is stolen, you will have bad luck for the entire year. So, what do the Koreans do? They hide their shoes so no ghosts would be able to take their shoes on Seollal’s eve.

In the Philippines, wearing anything round means welcoming the new year’s blessings. So, some Filipinos like to wear polka dots as this signifies money and fortune. Children gather as many coins as they can in their pockets or use their piggy banks and shake them as loudly as they can as the clock strikes midnight. This is believed to bring good fortune. Adults do this, too. To this day, my mother and my mother-in-law shake their coin-filled containers as midnight strikes!

Another quirky Filipino New Year ritual is for children to jump as high as they can when the clock strikes 12. There’s an old age belief that jumping on New Year makes the children taller. I used to do that when I was a kid. I still stand in the front row until now😊… But, guess what? I continue to tell my own sons to jump every new year. I guess, tradition sticks!

When do you celebrate the New Year in your own country? And what are your own country’s New Year’s tales?

새해 복 많이 받으세요! Saehae Bok Mani Badeuseyo!

(pancit and 12 kinds of fruits photos credited to source)

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