More than just a holiday to mark the beginning of a new year, Seollal is truly a special occasion for Korean people. Not only is it a time for paying respect to ancestors, but it is also an opportunity to catch up with family members. During Seollal, Koreans usually wear a hanbok (traditional clothes), performing ancestral rites, play folk games, eat traditional foods, listen to stories and talk well into the night. Read on to discover how Koreans celebrate Seollal.

Seollal demands a lot of preparation, and this ritual or the process of the preparation is called ¡®charye¡¯ in Korean, especially in terms of gifts, traveling, and not to mention, the holiday feast! As there are many things to purchase for the ancestral rites and gifts, department stores and markets are usually very crowded during the days leading up to Seollal. 

The foods for ancestral rites are prepared with a variety of wild herbs, meat, fish, and fruits all chosen with great attention paid to the quality of their shape, color, and freshness. The diversity and quantities of the preparation are huge, largely enough to feed and be shared with people who do not really celebrate the day as a cultural custom. 

Another crucial part of preparing for Seollal, especially for those far from home, is travel arrangements. Many people live away from their family home because of work, marriage, or study, and therefore must travel to celebrate Seollal with their families. So, there is a mad rush to book buses, trains, or plane tickets before they all sell out. Meanwhile, traveling by car during the holiday can take over two to four times the normal travel time due to heavy traffic. For this reason, real-time reports of highway traffic conditions during Seollal are broadcast on the radio and other mass media channels.

The morning of Seollal begins with an ancestral rite. Family members, each dressed up for the occasion (traditionally in hanbok, but often in Western formal attire nowadays), gather in front of the ritual table and set on it an ancestral tablet and dishes of ritual foods, which are according to the rules of ancestral rites. Once set, the rite begins with deep bows as greetings to the ancestor spirits, and proceeds with offerings and prayers before ending with bidding farewell to the spirits. The ritual is conducted to express respect and gratitude to one¡¯s ancestors and to pray for the family¡¯s well-being throughout the year. Although many prefers to celebrate the days excluding the charye ritual, it is still considered as a part of valuable traditions by Koreans.

Following the rite, everyone gathers together and eats the ritual food. The main dish of the day is tteok-guk, a traditional soup made with sliced rice cakes, beef, egg, vegetables, and other ingredients. In Korea, eating tteok-guk on New Year¡¯s Day is believed to add a year to one¡¯s age. People often ask each other, ¡°How many servings of tteok-guk have you had?¡± as a fun way to ask each other¡¯s age.