Christmas in South Korea

After college I traveled to South Korea as an English teacher. I ended up spending three Christmases abroad. One of my favorite holiday memories was going out Christmas caroling. See, Christmas caroling for your neighbors is not something that you do over in Korea. But one holiday season, my foreign friends and I really wanted to show our Korean friends how special some Christmas traditions could be: we made cookies, listened to Christmas music, and made our favorite holiday food- burritos!

That night, as we sat down to eat our burritos, my ceiling started to leak water. Quickly, my friend MiJung called the building maintenance, and two plumbers immediately arrived at my door. When they arrived the first thing that they noticed was not my leaking ceiling but the delicious buffet of burritos on the table. So we invited them to join our dinner! After dinner, the plumbers worked on fixing my ceiling while my friends and I practiced our Christmas songs for caroling. After a short time, it was concluded that the leaking ceiling was actually a problem with the pipes in my upstairs neighbor’s apartment. After the plumbers went on their way, we decided that the upstairs neighbors would be the best place to start our Christmas caroling. We put on our warm clothes, filled a bowl with holiday candy (sent from my parents in the United States), and set out.

My friend MiJung knocked on the door and when it opened, everyone started singing “Deck the Halls”, but before we finished the first line of the song, the neighbors slammed the door in our faces! We didn’t expect that at all, but we didn’t give up.

Our next stop was the security guard on the first floor. Our group of carolers gathered outside the door and started singing. Even though the security guard could see us through the glass doors, he just sat and looked at us like we were crazy. So once again, my friend MiJung knocked on the door and motioned that we would like to share some Christmas candy with him. The security guard opened the door a little, reached his hand out and took the candy from my hands- all of the candy, including the bowl!

With no candy left, we decided to stand out on the sidewalk and sing Christmas carols. We were freezing cold, but still enjoyed the night. And at the end, maybe out of sympathy or just hoping that we would go home, the nearby convenient store brought out free coffee for all of us.

Some of the pictures I have from that night include a group shot under a leaking ceiling, a plumber downing our burritos, and a group of freezing cold carolers standing on the sidewalk. And every time I look, I start laughing. We had so much fun together! And that’s really what Christmas is all about. Christ's birth is a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love to share with the people around us. For some people Christmas has turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists. But it’s not about that. Christmas is about sharing the love.