New Year’s Day

New Year’s Day brings the Covey family’s Korean customs into the foreground and gives Lara Jean a calendar-shaped occasion to confront what she wants from Peter Kavinsky. The day moves between inherited ritual and uncertain romance: while the family bows to elders and shares lucky food, Lara Jean privately hopes for a new beginning with Peter, then takes a concrete step toward one as the holiday ends.

Family Ritual and Its Participants

The observance begins with a dispute over hanboks. Daddy insists that the girls wear them because their cousins will be dressed that way and Grandma will be pleased. The practical discomfort is real: Kitty Covey dislikes having to walk delicately and hold her skirt closed. At Aunt Carrie and Uncle Victor’s home, however, the other cousins are not wearing hanboks. Kitty struggles not to yell at Daddy, and Margot Song Covey and Lara Jean give him disapproving looks. Grandma’s approving smile offers Lara Jean some compensation for spending the day dressed uncomfortably.

The first formal activity is bowing to elders. The order proceeds from oldest to youngest: Grandma sits first, then Aunt Carrie and Uncle Victor receive bows, followed by Daddy, with the younger generation continuing down the line to Kitty. On New Year’s Day, the bows carry wishes for good luck; in return, the elders give money. Lara Jean, Margot, and Kitty receive ten dollars each from Aunt Carrie and Uncle Victor, ten from Daddy, ten from Aunt Min and Uncle Sam, and twenty from Grandma. The amounts are part of the day’s practical pleasures, but the sequence and the exchange also make the family’s generations visible.

Grief Within a Recurring Custom

The bowing ritual makes an absence visible as well. When Daddy takes his turn sitting on the couch to receive the girls’ bows, an empty cushion remains beside him, as it has every New Year’s Day since Lara Jean’s mother died. Daddy smiles and hands out ten-dollar bills, but Lara Jean feels the sight of him sitting alone as an ache. Grandma catches her eye, and Lara Jean understands that they share the same thought. When Lara Jean kneels to bow, she resolves that Daddy will not be alone on that couch the following year.

That promise gives the observance a reach beyond the day itself. The custom returns each year, so the empty cushion is not merely a passing detail: its recurrence measures the family’s life after loss. Lara Jean’s vow imagines a change within that familiar pattern, though the scene does not say how she will bring it about. New Year’s Day holds both continuity and the possibility of alteration in the same room.

After the bows, the family eats rice cake soup for good luck. Aunt Carrie also serves black-eyed pea cakes, while Harry and Leon refuse both dishes and eat chicken nuggets in the TV room. The dining table is too crowded, so Lara Jean and Kitty eat on stools at the kitchen island, within earshot of the adults laughing. Lara Jean makes a private wish over her soup: that things will work out with Peter. The contrast is characteristic of the day: a public meal carries a customary wish for luck, while Lara Jean attaches the hope to her unsettled relationship.

A New Year’s Turning Point

The holiday also gives Lara Jean time to dwell on the letter she has written to Peter. In the car, she wonders whether it is heartfelt enough, how to deliver it, and how Peter might respond. She cannot settle what kind of relationship she wants: a serious romance, something lighter like their earlier arrangement, or a place between the two. What she can imagine clearly is Peter’s face and the effect his presence has on her. New Year’s Day therefore begins not with certainty about love, but with her recognition that she still wants a connection and fears losing it.

Later, as winter daylight fades, Lara Jean asks Daddy to drop her near Peter’s neighborhood. She times the request for a stoplight away from his home, and Daddy agrees without asking questions. Peter’s house is lit, his car and his mother’s minivan are in the driveway, and holiday lights remain across the street. Against those signs that the season is ending, Lara Jean treats the new year as a chance to begin again. Kitty watches from the back window and gives her a thumbs-up as Lara Jean runs to ring the doorbell.

The date’s significance thus lies less in a guaranteed resolution than in the movement it permits: from worry and wishing to an approach made in person. The family gathering has already placed Lara Jean’s hope beside a repeated ritual and an unresolved loss. At Peter’s door, that hope becomes action. New Year’s Day links the weight of what returns each year with Lara Jean’s effort to make the coming year different.