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Chuseok and the rites for ancestors

The autumn harvest holiday when families set out food for the ancestors and visit their graves.

Jesa , a type of Korean ancestor veneration held on Chuseok (Korean mid-autumn festival).
Photo: by Joseph Steinberg (Baltimoron in Korea) at Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

About Chuseok and the rites for ancestors

Chuseok falls on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, near the autumn full moon. In the morning families hold charye, a short ceremony in which a table of food, including new rice, fruit and half-moon rice cakes (songpyeon), is set before the ancestors, who are believed to share in the meal. Afterwards they visit and tidy the family graves. Folk tradition says the moon is brightest and the ancestors closest at this season, and in some regions women once danced in a circle, ganggangsullae, under the moon. Nearly all the steps are done by the family without a priest, in the Confucian style, though shamans in some places add spirit-appeasing rites.

Also part of it, and being written: Chuseok (The harvest festival and its customs.), Jesa (The ancestral rite in Korean families.), Songpyeon (The rice cake laid on the table.).

About this page

Written by the EveryJaadu desk with AI assistance. Background: "Chuseok" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family, and are described as belief and practice. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.

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