Sep 13, 2019
Chuseok 2019
This Doodle’s Key Themes
Today’s Doodle celebrates Chuseok, sometimes referred to as Korean Thanksgiving, with an illustration of persimmons trees, whose brightly colored fruit symbolizes the season. One of the most important annual holidays in Korean culture, this three-day harvest festival is a time for far-flung family members to return home and pay tribute to ancestors, while enjoying traditional meals and games.
Chuseok is also known as hangawi, a name that refers to the large “harvest moon” that appears each year on the fifteenth day of the eight month, according to the lunar calendar. The day begins with a memorial service, known as charye, to honor the family’s ancestors. Relatives gather around a table loaded with rice, fruit, and songpyeon. These specially shaped rice cakes are filled with sesame seeds, red beans, or chestnuts, and steamed over a fragrant bed of pine needles.
This holiday would not be complete without a trip to the ancestral burial ground, known as seongmyo. As a sign of respect, family members spend time cleaning the gravesites of loved ones. Once the work is done, the families participate in some light-hearted pastimes, like samulnori (a game using percussion instruments) and talchum (a traditional mask dance where participants represent different characters). Men take part in some friendly competition with ssireum wrestling matches, while women dress in traditional hanbok dresses for ganggangsullae, joining hands in a circle, singing, and dancing under the light of the full moon.
Early concepts by artist David Lu
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