Ceremony
The ceremony nowadays is also performed at weddings, sporting events, opening days at new companies, and other significant events worthy of being celebrated.
In Japan, mochi was traditionally made at home, but most families today buy it ready-made. Over the holidays, a pair of round mochi (kagami mochi) the size of small plates -- one a little larger than the other -- is stacked on a stand and placed in a household Shinto or Buddhist altar or tokonoma as an offering to the deities that visit on New Year's. The ornamental mochi is removed on January 11 and broken into smaller pieces before being eaten.
By this time, the kagami mochi is usually quite brittle, and cracks appear on the surface. The mochi is not cut with a knife, since cutting has negative connotations (cutting off ties) and is instead broken with one's hands or a hammer.
Many Japanese martial arts dojo use the Kagami Biraki ceremony to signify their first practice of the New Year.
Read more about this topic: Kagami Biraki
Famous quotes containing the word ceremony:
““Dirty fellow!” exclaimed the Captain, seizing both her wrists, “hark you, Mrs. Frog, you’d best hold your tongue; for I must make bold to tell you, if you don’t, that I shall make no ceremony of tripping you out of the window, and there you may lie in the mud till some of your Monseers come to help you out of it.””
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“But ceremony never did conceal,
Save to the silly eye, which all allows,
How much we are the woods we wander in.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)