Seollal Foods: Tteokguk, Sechan and the New Year Table

Seollal (설날), the first day of the first lunar month, is one of Korea's two great family holidays. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture traces its earliest description to seventh-century Chinese histories of Silla and notes that in the Joseon dynasty it ranked among the four major holidays, with Hansik, Dano and Chuseok. This page covers the food of the day; the year-long calendar is in seasonal foods.

Tteokguk: a bowl that adds a year

The defining dish is tteokguk, soup of sliced garaetteok, the long white rice cake. The Encyclopedia describes it as the main Seollal food, notes that mandu may be added, and records that tteokguk was already sold in markets in Joseon. It also reports the saying that eating a bowl adds a year to one's age, so that someone who skips it cannot grow a year older. The same entry mentions one folk etymology, offered among several, that seol became the sal used to count years. The long cylinder of rice cake is often read as a wish for long life, though the sources consulted for this page do not state this directly, so treat it as a popular gloss rather than a documented origin.

Sechan: the wider holiday table

Sechan (세찬) is the term for foods prepared and shared at New Year. According to the Encyclopedia, besides tteokguk it includes steamed siru-tteok, injeolmi, battered fish and meat fritters (jeonyueo), mung-bean pancakes (bindaetteok), gangjeong-type confections, and the drinks sikhye and sujeonggwa. One detail shows how ritual shapes cooking: the red-bean steamed cakes made for the ancestral table use hulled beans, because unhulled red beans are avoided at charye. For the rice-cake family as a whole, see tteok.

Charye: the table for the ancestors

On Seollal morning families hold charye (차례), the holiday ancestral rite. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes it as a rite that reports the turn of the season to the ancestors and offers seasonal food, limited to ancestors up to four generations back; more distant forebears are honored at the grave. For the table, the charye sangchari entry says rice cake soup stands in for the usual rice and soup, so those two are omitted. Clear rice wine, sejoo (세주), is also served and then shared by the family. At the end the family eats the offered food together, a custom called eumbok. The wider rules of arranging an offering table, and the 2022 Sungkyunkwan guidance that simplified them, are covered in jesa food.

Sebae and the season of greeting

After the rite, people in new clothes (seolbim) bow to elders in the family and community with wishes for good health and fortune, the custom of sebae. The Encyclopedia notes that the holiday period traditionally ran until Daeboreum, the first full moon, which is why that day has its own food customs; see Jeongwol Daeboreum. Games such as yunnori and kite flying belong to the same stretch of days.

Seollal today

The Encyclopedia records that Seollal became a national holiday in 1985 as "Folk Day," was restored to its own name in 1989, and has had a three-day holiday since 1999. Charye and grave visits continue, many traditional games have faded, and store-bought rice cake is common, though tteokguk remains the standard holiday food. For other turning points of life and the year, see life ritual foods.