First, to all my family, friends and readers not in Boulder County: please send any thoughts and prayers you can spare to the areas in the northern front range of Colorado. While all my close friends are safe, many are facing tens of thousands of dollars of damage, weeks or months of displacement, and likely years of rebuilding ahead. The house I used to live in had only very minor flooding, and it’s great to know they’re doing well.
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It’s been a while since my last update, because we were out and about touring the southern coast of the South Korean mainland for our week-long Chuseok holiday. Before I dive into stories from the break, I wanted to share some pre-break fun and explain why we got this break…
Chuseok is a lunar holiday celebrated on 15th day of the 8th lunar month, near the autumnal equinox. The Koreans around here tell us it’s similar to our Thanksgiving, celebrating harvests and thanking their ancestors for helping them get where they are today.
We learned most of this at church, where we got to join the locals in pre-Chuseok rice-dumpling making and dinner after last Sunday’s mass.
Church basement ladies in Korea with the tea table all set up before Chuseok dumpling making and dinner.
Some of the women put on traditional clothes and gave thanks in front of a decorated table dedicated to their ancestors.
The beautiful Chuseok table.
The ladies in traditional dress were prepared to acknowledge their ancestors at the Chuseok table. The table is set with fruits, fish, meats, cakes, dumplings, rice wine and more. They leave the food out for about a half hour to allow their ancestors time to enjoy it, and then are allowed to eat it themselves.
The table also contained photos of their ancestors and the women bowed and knelt before the altar.
The priest stopped by our table to chat, and explained how when the first Catholic missionaries in China and Korea struggled with this practice. The Franciscans interpreted this practice as ancestor worship and thought it should be outlawed. The Dominicans disagreed and thought it was just showing respect for family and would fit within Catholicism just fine. Both groups approached the pope at the time, who decided not to give any decision, but just said that they should work with local traditions to help bring more people to Catholicism. So there’s no official decision, but mostly they work together ok.
Our task for the afternoon was to make our own songpyeon – a rice dough dumpling filled with sweet or savory fillings.
Our ingredients for making songpyeon – rice gluten dough with and without herbs, green peas, and sugar/sesame seed fillings.
We oiled our fingers to keep down the stick, grabbed little bits of dough, made a thumb indent to fill with a scoop of sugar (in the white) or peas (in the green) then sealing it up. The final step is shaping the dumpling into the shape of your province! Super cute.
Here are our finished dumplings. The challenging ones stayed pocket shaped, but lots of them are shaped like little Jeju islands!
When we finished making our own to take home and boil on Chuseok day, we got to eat a lovely dinner – pork, lots of sides, and some pre-made dumplings they had prepared for us.
Yummy food at Church for Chuseok.
Cute little girl enjoying her Chuseok dinner.
They treated us great and even sent us away with a harvest gift of rice to bless our table for the season. A great way to learn about Chuseok and celebrate with our church community here.
Hope you all had a lovely Chuseok wherever you are.