Of Korean Birthdays and Mine
As I write this, it's 9:00 am, Thursday, August 16 in Korea. Back home in Atlanta, it's 8:00 pm Wednesday. Going by calendar date, here in Korea it is my birthday. Back home, there are a few hours to go yet. Just one of the little quirks of time zone differences that we tend to overlook. I'm sure there are pedantic people out there who don't celebrate their birthday until the hour of their birth arrives. I'm not one of them, though, so when my wife wished me "Happy Birthday" shortly after midnight, I didn't complain that I still had over 13 hours to go.
Things get weirder when you consider 'Korean age'. By Western standards, I'm 36 today. In Korea, I'm 37 and have been since either New Year's Day or Lunar New Year's Day, depending upon who you talk to. Tradition in Korea dictates that you are 1 year old when you are born, then with every Lunar New Year you become a year older. In other words, where we count the total complete, actual years of life in the West, Koreans count ordinally by calendar year. So the year in which you are born is your first, making you 1 year old, and on the new year you enter your second calendar year of life making you 2.
Unfortunately, when Koreans talk to foreigners, some of them give their Korean age while others give their 'Western age'. So when a Korean tells you she's 30, you don't know if she's 28 or 29 in Western age or 31 or 32 in Korean age. Usually this isn't a big deal, unless you're asking someone on a date who tells you she's 18. If that's her Korean age, you're asking for trouble.
Another confusing bit is that Korea uses two calendars now. They use both the Gregorian Calendar adopted from the West and the Lunar Calendar (a.k.a. the Chinese Calendar) that they have used for centuries. For most official business, the Gregorian Calendar is the preference. The Lunar Calendar is used primarily for traditional activities, such as maintaining the family register that every family keeps (records of names and dates of birth and death going back centuries), as well as personal reasons. Older people almost universally mark their birthdays by the Lunar Calendar. As the generations get younger, they tend to mix it up a bit. Some go the traditional route, a few follow the Gregorian Calendar, and many do both. So depending upon who you talk to, their new age comes with one or the other new year and their birthday comes on one or the other calendar, or both.
For example, my wife's birthday is Jun 23 on the Lunar calendar. This year, it fell on August 5 on the Gregorian calendar. The year we first met, it was on August 13. I remember because we celebrated together, since it was only three days before mine. Sometimes it's in July. We keep calendars with dual dates now in order for me to keep track. Each square has a little red number in the corner to mark the lunar date.
Koreans celebrate their birthdays not because they are a year older, but to mark the occasion. They typically eat a kind of seaweed soup for breakfast on that day. This is a sort of tribute to their mothers. When women give birth in Korea, they eat the same soup for a few days after. Then, to celebrate they take their friends out for dinner and drinks, or some such, and pay for it all. That seems totally backwards to someone coming from the West, but it makes sense to Koreans.
Personally, I don't celebrate my birthdays anymore. It's just not an event that puts me in a festive mood. The idea that I'm one year closer to shriveling up like a prune doesn't seem like a particularly happy one to me. My birthday is a rather morbid date anyway, since Elvis had to go and ruin it for me in 1977. Back when I still celebrated my birthdays, there was always someone who wanted to bring that up in the middle of the party -- a toast in memory of The King. Talk about stealing someone's thunder. These days, I don't care a bit. Honor all of the dead you want.