“Oh, I say [happy new year to my grandmother in Korean] and bow before her on Lunar New Year. Then my mom makes all of the traditional ‘New Year Korean food’ and we eat well.” 

Lunar New Year looks different across the many countries that celebrate. It’s also quite different for those who celebrate in America. My boyfriend had told me how him and his Korean-American family celebrate the Korean Lunar New Year. He told me that he doesn’t know a lot of the tradition other than eating a lot of the traditional Korean food and bowing before his elders. He also mentioned that it’s a lot more popular among people and online now. He said that when he was younger, he feels like no one knew what a Korean person was much less knew about their culture. Nowadays, everyone knows a lot more about the culture and especially about Lunar New Year; almost more than he knows himself. 

As someone who is actively learning Korean, I think it is interesting to see my knowledge compared to my Korean-American boyfriend’s knowledge. A lot of times, I come back to him mentioning some things and he would either be clueless or ask me to elaborate so he can also learn. The first instance this happened was when I first told him that I learned about the Korean Lunar Year in class. We had learned how to say happy new year, ate a lot of the snacks that they eat at that time, and also looked at a presentation on what Korean people usually do in the day and what food they eat. My boyfriend had known some of the food and snacks that I mentioned, but I remember him saying that his mom wouldn’t normally make that food for this family when this event happened. After learning about how this event was celebrated this specific way in my class, I was curious about how all Korean-Americans celebrate, especially with being in LA, one of the biggest Korean-American cities in America. It makes me think about the traditions developed in the states and how similar these Korean-American traditions are to the Korean ones.