By Michael Hurt, Huffington Post
Well, not really. This post will not be exploring back down below the Han River, but will be looking at the particularly Korean nature of Christmas. But if it has to do with rapid adoption of Western culture or mass consumer culture, you know Gangnam has to come into this somewhere.
Christmas in the Myeongdong fashion/shopping district is tradition.
For many Americans, the Christmas and holiday season has always been a special time to be spent with family and is a sacred oasis from the world of work, no matter what one’s religion. One has to remember that Christmas in Korea, and in Japan, for that matter, is a markedly different celebration. In recent years, Americans have been heard to the bemoan the over-commercialization of Santa’s special day, and have been seen to fight over its perceived over-secularization, or even the supposedly “attack on Christmas.” In the end, this is all a fight about a moral thing: a Rankin-Bass cartoon lesson about remembering “the true meaning of Christmas.”
However, South Korea has not been the country that was very invested in the decoration and accoutrements of that holiday, and even into the 1990s, not very much actually happened on 25 December besides being what Koreans call a “red day” on the calendar and a public holiday from work. For Koreans, it wasn’t even the biggest holiday of the year, which is reserved for the Korean version of Thanksgiving, when people venerate their ancestors in the small rituals in the household. In fact, this holiday called Chuseok often ends up lopping three or four days off of the work week, depending on when it falls every year. So Christmas hasn’t always been a holiday of great import for everyone in the land of the morning calm.
In Korea, Christmas is for couples. Every moment of the holiday is the final 15 minutes of that holiday special romantic edition of your favorite show, heartwarming end of A Christmas Carol, or alternatively and more recently, Love Actually.
It’s a time to look one’s best, to go on the ultimate romantic date, to be the best couple one can be.
Read the full article by Michael Hurt from Huffington Post.
