Christmas in Korea

A few questions I've gotten from Facebook (the reason I've slowed down on posts here) is if they celebrate Christmas here like they do in the US. Short answer : yes. But they don't really understand it all. This part of the world (isolated more than Japan in the grand scheme of things) has had Confucian influence for over 3,000 years, so the whole Christianity thing is really new. Less than half of the people observe any religion at all (which is why it's amazing to me the crime rate is so low). So they don't understand the emphasis on Christ's birth. They just know it's a time to stock Christmas stuff, so have they gotten over-commercialized? Not really, have we? Yes, because we're the ones with the Savior and they're the ones with the traditions we've been able to influence. But this blog isn't about us, it's about my experiences in Korea.
We did have a Church Christmas Party at the Yeongdunpo Chapel with the Koreans and the Seoul English Branch. It was a smashing success in my opinion, and not only because I'm on the activities committee. But it was a lot of fun. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I had the "CJ3 Holiday Social" to attend, of which I'm on the committee for them as well! Man, I'll tell you what, based on my responsibilities alone, I deserved to be a major in the AF a LONG time ago!
But they had a cool shadow puppet thing where a guy follows Jesus around and sees all the miracles and learns about him and his suspicions change to discipleship. It was all in Korean and you had the words to read on the screen that were projected up there but you could feel the emotions as they read their parts and moved their puppets around. At some point a little Korean kid got in there and messed it up, and I'm sure the parents were embarassed, but it didn't detract from the show at all. Here's the clincher- when the KOJANGEYs and the MIGOOKS (Americans and Koreans) do an activity together and there's food involved, the Americans get turned off by the Koreans' lack of waiting in lines. They just swarm the tables and grab what they can and there's no order or anything. It's the same on the roads so the Americans get offended that they wait in line forever and get nothing at the end. So this time we announced the way food would be served. And it worked. It took an hour or so to feed everyone, but it was better than a lot of people getting mad and not wanting to do anything with the Koreans again. Maybe one of these days we'll play softball against them or something. Collectively, they're an extremely capable people, but they aren't much as individuals. They're too programmed to think a certain way to be adaptable other than in a survival situation. The US teaches people to think outside the box and rewards rebels that make it. Here, it isn't like that. But they love to see our kids and touch their hair. Especially Violet the red head.
I played the violin a little at the Christmas Party and then it was off to Yongsan to watch everyone get loaded and stand around socializing. We sang some Norebang (Karaoke in Korean) and drove people to the clubs so they didn't drive out on the roads.
Our Christmas tree is 3' tall in the spirit of everything being small in Asia.
I'm working half days so there's no real hurry to get everything done. That's nice.