Lunar New Year

Date: 2/5/2011

Lunar New Year, or Seolnal (설날) in Korean, is one of the biggest holidays, if not the biggest, in Korea.  It is the celebration of the new year in the lunar calendar.  It is a family oriented holiday, where everyone goes to their home towns and prays/thanks their ancestors.  

The official celebration day changes every year because it according to the Lunar calendar.  But, this year it was on February 3.

I experienced the reverse of what happened durning Christmas.  During Christmas I kept wondering when the decorations where come to come out, where the Christmas spirit was finally going to over take the country, etc.  For Seolnal, I kept wondering, "What is going on?"  "Why are there people in Hanbok in Lotte Mart?"

And, indeed, Lotte Mart was quiet the place to see the preparations for Seolnal.  I brought my camera one day and took pictures to document the festivities.

It is important to note that not only do people pay respect to just their ancestors, but also to anyone older than them.  So a HUGE part of Seolnal (at least from an outsiders perspective) is giving gifts to people at work.  As a teacher I don't really get this, but anyone who is in an office has to get all their co-workers and bosses gifts.

Thus, when you walk into Lotte Mart you run right into this desk with mountains of packages behind it.  I imagine its some sort of gift registration, pick-up, or ordering place.

But if you want to look through all the available gift sets, you just walk to the middle of the store and there are all these ladies in Hanbok, willing, able and ready to help you pick out the best Seolnal gift set!

But what kind of gifts can one purchase?  Well, Koreans are very practical in their selection of gifts.  You can get all sorts of useful things. 

Socks...

These are the smallest gift sets.  You must not like this person very much to get them socks.

A soap set.  You can never have enough soap, you know....

 Alcohol.  A good idea.

 More soap.  I mean, seriously, you need soap for every room of the house (Kitchen and both bathrooms). And there's different types of soap, too.  Have to cover all the bases!

 More Alcohol.  I think these are actually very pretty.  But that's my, "oh, look, sake-cups!  That makes sense!" sensibilty.

Here we have shampoo, conditioner, rinse, body wash, and toothpaste.  Don't know why you would possibly need 7 tubes of toothpaste, but not going to judge.  Oh, and some more soap.

 And finally, if not most famously, we have the last gift set option.  Maybe I should say infamously.

Spam.

Yes.  That is correct.  If you like a person in Korea, and they are your elder, you can get them a nice gift set selection of Spam.

 I really wasn't joking: see:  A gift set of 12 spam cans.

There is a history behind Spam in Korea.  Back int he 1950s--Korean War Times--Americans gave the Koreans spam as a food/protein suppliment.  And, since then, it has been integrated into the food culture and now is an integral part of Seolnal.  Delicious, ne?  Anneiyo!

 Oh, this one includes some oil so you can fry up your spam.

After taking photos of the Seolnal gift sets, Sarah and I wondered around Lotte Mart.  I think we were blowing time, not really ready to head home, but not really wanting to do anything that involved thinking.  We walked past the pet section and, as is my habit, I walked through it.  And I saw that pets are not neglected in this very important holiday.

You can dress your pup up in a hanbok (traditional Korean Clothing).  I had Sarah pose for a picture.