Chuseok, also known as Korean Thanksgiving Day, is a major mid-autumn harvest festival and a three-day holiday in South Korea celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar on the full moon. The festival is held around the autumn equinox, which is typically in September or October. The origins of Chuseok can be traced back to Koreas past as an agrarian society, where families gathered to enjoy time together and give thanks to their ancestors for the plentiful harvest.

During Chuseok, Koreans return to their ancestral hometowns to celebrate with their families, causing one of the biggest traffic jams of the year as people often take to the road to reach the provinces outside of Seoul. People perform ancestral worship rituals early in the morning and visit the tombs of their immediate ancestors to trim plants, clean the area around the tomb, and offer food, drink, and crops to their ancestors.

Koreans celebrate Chuseok by making special foods, particularly a certain kind of rice cake called songpyeon. Songpyeon is made with finely ground new rice and the dough is kneaded into small round shapes and filled with sesame seeds, chestnuts, red beans, or other similar ingredients. The rice cakes are arranged upon layers of pine needles as they are steamed, filling the home with the aroma of pine.

Chuseok is a traditional holiday where many of the customs from the old days still stand. Some of these customs include:

• Ancestral worship rituals: Early in the morning, family members gather at the head house of the family to hold memorial services called charye in honor of their ancestors. During Chuseoks charye, freshly harvested rice, alcohol, and songpyeon are prepared as an offering to the familys ancestors.

• Gift-giving: A modern-time custom taking place during Chuseok is gift-giving. Although not everyone is required to give gifts, its considered a nice gesture to give the host family (usually the grandparents or the familys eldest son) gifts when youre visiting their house for the holiday.

• Entertainment and folk games: As Chuseok is a celebration of harvest and abundance, the holiday period is made joyful with various entertainment and folk games such as samulnori (traditional percussion quartet), talchum (mask dance), ganggangsullae (Korean circle dance), and ssireum (traditional Korean wrestling) .

Chuseok is an important holiday in Korea, and it is a time for family members to gather together to give thanks to their ancestors for an abundant autumn harvest.