Korean holidays are a little different than I have been used to. First, Christmas. It's just not that big of a deal here. Christmas is more like a "couples" holiday- one of the many they have here. So, on Christmas, you don't see families out doing things - you see boyfriends taking their girlfriends out for coffee or dinner. Flowers are given. It's like a date day, somewhere in there is "love" all mixed in - but not like I think of love and Christmas with going home and special food and all.
Before I moved here, my friend warned me that I wouldn't see Christmas trees or decorations, just to brace myself. Then December came - and we saw some decorations. She claimed it was about an 85% increase from what she saw here last year; but it still didn't seem like all that much. (You can see from older posts, we still had trees and wreaths, etc.)
Downtown Gwangju, there was a Christmas tree, sortof. It was made from strands of lights. There was a giant lighted globe at the top of the tree, then a cross. You can see it pictured with me below. (This picture was taken in mid December, I think.) They left this tree up well into January.
In my neighborhood/dong, they had tons of white lights decorating the tree/park/median area in the middle of the street. These were left up until just a week or so ago - I'm guessing they leave them up through the Lunar New Year?
Lunar New Year - this is the beginning of February - that will be in a separate posting.
Valentine's Day - one of the 5 or 6 "couple holidays" here. This is where people have dates and mainly give each other chocolate. It is for people in relationships. However, many of my students brought me chocolate (well, what they call chocolate here). They do not make or give cards.
The next "holiday" off from school will be March 1st. No one at work could explain why we have this day off, just that it is a holiday - no classes. Someone else explained it better - that is the day that Korea decided to become independent. It's not the day they did it, just the day they decided. So we get that one day, Tuesday this year I think, off from school.
There are no other Korean holidays in March, except that over the next few months -- there are a few more "couple holidays" - there is a Black Day and a White Day and something else. One of these is for the boy to give the girl a gift; the other is for the girl to give the boy a gift. Then, interestingly enough, another day is for people who are not in relationships - but just friends to give each other gifts.
In May, we have both Children's Day (they actually get a day off from school to just rest/play - ONE day a year!) and buddah's birthday. There are no school holidays in June or July.
The other thing I noticed was about cookie decorating. At Christmas, I decorated Christmas cookies with some of my classes because this was exposing them to some American traditions and they had NEVER done this before. It was quite a challenge to find even ingredients for frosting - they don't frost or decorate cakes or cookies like that here. (Most of the bakeries use something like whipped cream and fruit; all the cakes are either white or brown, chocolate.) Remember that most Koreans do not have ovens in their homes.
So, we figured out how to make powdered sugar. I did find some sprinkles - for a crazy exorbitant price; but then I used chocolate covered sunflower seeds and just regular white frosting. I did not have food coloring.
In January, I did get food coloring from the US. In February, I noticed that all the "stationary" stores had a whole section of cake/cookie decorating items. They still don't have food coloring readily available, but they do have tubes of colored frosting - and sprinkles galore - and more. I guess it's all out for Valentine's Day because there are candy molds or hearts and large heart cake pans; but it seemed odd to me that these wouldn't be out in December. Which I guess isn't that odd since Christmas isn't that big here, but I'm just not used to it all yet.
My students had never heard of Groundhog's day. For some reason, I always liked it, even though I know it is a bit silly. At the end of January, I had some of my reading classes read a book about Groundhog Day (by Margaret McNamara) - and they loved it. They thought it was so silly. Well, until they had to fill out the worksheet I made to go with it - then they thought it was just work. Fun work, but nonetheless work. Ha.
There are more holidays here, which I will talk about as they get closer. As a teacher, I find myself always aware of when the next holiday/break is. For now, there's a start. Here's a picture from a few months ago. Happy Valentine's Day! Happy Groundhog Day! Happy Lunar new Year! Merry Christmas!
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