동지

The solar term Dongji (冬至) is dong (冬), "winter," and ji (至), "to arrive, to reach the utmost": the name of the solar term, falling between Daeseol and Sohan, on which the day is the shortest and the night the longest of the year, and after which the daylight begins to lengthen again. It comes around 22 December, and in 2026 on Tuesday 22 December. It is a different word from dongji (同志), "comrade, one who shares a purpose," with which it shares only its sound; winter (冬) and arrive (至) against same (同) and will (志), the two share not a single character. Urimalsaem, the open dictionary of the National Institute of the Korean Language, defines the solar term Dongji as "one of the twenty-four solar terms. It falls between Daeseol (大雪) and Sohan (小寒), around 22 or 23 December, when the sun passes the winter solstice point. In the Northern Hemisphere the day is the shortest and the night the longest of the year," and adds that "because at Dongji the yang force is newly born amid the fullness of yin, it is taken as the beginning of the year." Q: What does the solar term Dongji mean? A: Dong (冬), "winter," and ji (至), "to reach": the day on which the force of winter has reached its utmost, one of the twenty-four solar terms, between Daeseol and Sohan. The night is longest and from this day the daylight lengthens; in 2026 it falls on Tuesday 22 December. It is a different word from dongji (同志), "comrade." Begin with the name. 至 carries, beside "to arrive," the sense of going to the end and reaching the utmost. The Shuowen jiezi glosses 至 as "鳥飛从高下至地也," a bird flying down from on high and reaching the ground, and the common view among scholars of the script reads the oracle-bone form as an arrow that has flown and struck the ground. The place where what has flown can go no further: that is 至. 冬 is taken, by the common view, to draw the two knotted ends of a cord, to which ice (冫) was later added, so that the end of the year and the cold are held in one character. 冬至, then, is the day winter has arrived at the end beyond which it cannot go. The entry on Dongji in the Yueling qishi'erhou jijie (月令七十二候集解), said to have been compiled by Wu Cheng (吳澄) of the Yuan, reads "冬至，十一月中。終藏之氣至此而極也。": Dongji is the mid-term (中) of the eleventh month, and the force of closing and storing away reaches its utmost here. In its entry on the summer solstice the same book cites the Yunhui (韻會) for "至，極也," 至 meaning the utmost. The three pentads (三候) into which the same book divides the fortnight of Dongji are "蚯蚓結," the earthworms knot together; "麋角解," the elk sheds its antlers; and "水泉動," the springs begin to stir. To write that the springs stir on the day that enters deep winter is to set inside the name of the term the thought that what has reached its utmost turns back. Dongji is the name of an end and of a beginning. Dongji is the day the sun reaches the winter solstice point, 270 degrees of ecliptic longitude. In the Northern Hemisphere the sun stands at its southernmost, the day is shortest and the night longest, and from this day the daylight grows a little each day. A fortnight after Soseol comes Daeseol, a fortnight after Daeseol Dongji, and a fortnight after Dongji Sohan. Q: When is Dongji in 2026? A: Tuesday 22 December. By the lunar calendar it falls on the fourteenth day of the eleventh month, which makes it a jung-dongji, a mid-month Dongji. When Dongji falls in the first ten days of the eleventh lunar month it is called ae-dongji, "child Dongji"; in the middle ten, jung-dongji; in the last ten, no-dongji, "old Dongji"; and on an ae-dongji, held to be unlucky for children, red-bean sirutteok, it is said, was made instead of red-bean porridge, as the folk tradition has it. The old Koreans also called Dongji a-se (亞歲), the "second New Year," or jageun seol, the "little New Year." Hong Seok-mo's (洪錫謨) Dongguk sesigi (東國歲時記) records, in its Dongji entry for the eleventh month, "冬至日稱亞歲," that the day of Dongji is called a-se: a day second only to New Year's Day. The saying "one is not a year older until Dongji has passed" is passed on, and with it the saying that one must eat Dongji patjuk, red-bean porridge, to grow a year older. By the common view there was a time in the old calendars when the month of Dongji was taken as the first month of the year, and the name "little New Year" remained after the New Year moved to the first day of the first month. Q: Why is red-bean porridge eaten at Dongji? A: Because, it is said, the red bean was believed to drive away ill fortune. The Dongji entry of the Dongguk sesigi records "煮赤豆粥用糯米粉作鳥卵狀投其中爲心": red-bean porridge (赤豆粥) is cooked, and glutinous rice flour is shaped like bird eggs (鳥卵狀) and dropped in as its heart, the saealsim; it is sweetened with honey and offered as the food of the season at the rites, and, "灑豆汁於門板以除不祥," the bean broth is sprinkled on the door boards to remove ill fortune. For the reason, the same book draws on the Jingchu suishiji (荊楚歲時記) of the Chinese Southern Dynasties, which tells, "共工氏有不才子以冬至死爲疫鬼畏赤小豆," that the unworthy son (不才子) of Gonggong (共工氏) died on the day of the winter solstice and became a spirit of pestilence, and, since he feared red beans, was to be driven off by red-bean porridge cooked on that day. In the Jingchu suishiji as it survives today this passage stands not in the main text, "冬至日，作赤豆粥，以禳疫," but in the commentary attached to it, and its wording differs slightly, "不才之子." This records a belief as the folk almanacs pass it down; this article does not set it up as fact. What is plain is the road by which the thought that red drives back the dark became the custom of setting a red porridge on the table on the longest night. The saealsim, it is also said, were eaten one for each year of one's age, so the little New Year, the porridge and the added year are held in a single bowl. A calendar went with Dongji. The same entry of the Dongguk sesigi records that the Gwansanggam (觀象監), the Joseon office of astronomy, presented the almanac (曆書) on the day of Dongji and that almanacs bound in yellow and in white were distributed to the officials, "頒黃粧白粧于百官"; and that, "端午之扇官分于吏冬至之曆吏獻于官是謂夏扇冬曆," the fans of Dano were handed down from the offices to their clerks and the almanacs of Dongji were presented by the clerks up to the offices, which was called haseon donglyeok (夏扇冬曆), "summer fans, winter calendars." To receive the dates of the new year on the day the sun turns back is a memory, kept inside a custom, that Dongji was once the threshold of the year. This is how Dongji is used today. It is not a public holiday, so on the calendar the two characters "Dongji" survive in small print beside 22 December, and the news says "Dongji, the longest night of the year," following it with the times of sunrise and sunset. Villages, temples and welfare centres cook and share Dongji patjuk, and in an ae-dongji year red-bean sirutteok takes the place of the porridge. Falling in the same month as the year's end, it is set beside lines that look back over the year. In the search box the same two syllables are shared between 同志 and 冬至, so one must type "Dongji solar term" for this day to appear. Dongji is a name given to the day winter has gone as far as it can go. Inside its two characters are 冬, the knotted end of the year, and 至, that which has flown and come to rest; the Jijie's gloss that the force of storing away reaches its utmost; and the memory of the seasons in which it was called the little New Year, porridge was cooked and almanacs were shared. Dongji, "winter, arrive": a Korean word for the day the night is longest and the daylight lengthens from the next, the day an end becomes a beginning.