A Recessional for Christmas Cards
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Christmas is over by a week already, but to my great bewilderment and regret, I have not received any Christmas card this year yet. Let me see. Yes, there is one from my elder sister living in the United States, and this is the only one I have received this year so far. This is outrageous, unbelievable and a great humiliation for me. Who am I? I am not a hermit in the woods. I am a university professor in Seoul who has been teaching innumerable students for more than twenty years, and I have been living in firm belief that I am always loved and respected by most of them. Some of them, not all, therefore, ought to remember me and express their gratitude or fondness by writing a Christmas card at least once a year. It doesn't cost much money or time. For me that is all what Christmas is for.
It is even a horror for me who had once, at my best days, received more than a hundreds, and who used to receive about fifty on average until quite recently. Though slow and dull a man I am to the rapid change of the times and tides of the world, I could perceive vaguely that the number of Christmas cards I was receiving was decreasing year by year. But it had never occurred to me that they would ever cease to come at all. This is too much, too sudden and too humiliating for me to stomach. Then, have they all conspired to stop writing Christmas cards to me?
Now I realize belatedly that it is not only the Christmas cards that I missed this year. Where have gone all those familar Christmas carols? They must have been on the radio, or must have flown from the record shops on the streets, but I have no memory of them. The small Christmas tree in the coffee shop I frequent almost every day after lunch was not lit this year. My wife who used to set it up every year early in December without fail failed even to bring it out; it is still in the box. Given the fact that all my children have grown up and left us, and we had that all important and uproarious presidential election on the 19th of December this year, this plain negligence or neglect of Christmas paraphernalia might as well be understood or forgiven, but definitely leave something much to be desired for me.
Look! O, my God. I am the very culprit who is responsible for the silent and quiet Christmas. I have not bought any Christmas cards nor written to anyone. The only card I wrote this year was to my elder sister as an answer to hers. And I must confess here with shame and guilt that I had not done it in the true spirit of Christmas. I did not buy the card to begin with. I found it by chance between the leaves of a book. It was one of the leftover cards I had bought years before. Had it not been for it, this year could have been the first Christmas in my life without writing a Christmas card since I started to write it when I was a small country boy.
In retrospect, it was not so once. Christmas used to begin even early in November, when the familiar Christmas carols began to overflow from the radio, from the record shops on the streets, and when the Christmas cards were displayed in profuse quantity everywhere in front of all the stationery shops and at a corner of department stores. The appearance of Christmas carols and cards, along with the charity bells of the Salvation Army ringing on the streets, was the earliest and the unmistakable harbinger of Christmas. Although I was and am not a Christian, I felt the spirit of the holiday to the bone for no specific or particular reasons.
Then I found myself going to downtown to buy the best Christmas cards of the year I could select among so many. It was one of the many works to be done without fail. Before the mountain and in the sea of Christmas cards displayed I knew where to go to find what I wanted to buy: the corner where they sold the foreign cards, that is, cards imported from the United States to be more correct and exact. For certain period of time in our recent history the United States of America meant everything foreign, good, better, and advanced to us, including the Christmas cards. They were so exotic and attractive in their designs, colors, mood and atmosphere. I selected and bought as many as I could pay, and returned home like triumphant soldiers marching home. At home, late at night, I wrote each of them picturing the happy faces of those, one by one, who would receive it with surprise, happiness and appreciation of my refined taste, high aesthetic standard and sincere care and love for them.
And Christmas cards began to arrive in droves and piled up on my desk every day from early in December, from my students home and abroad. Among them those few from abroad, mostly from the United States, attracted my eyes. I used to keep them long after Christmas, sometimes till next Christmas simply because they were so cute and lovely, and I could not throw them away with ease. In some rare cases I have kept one or two of them in a picture frame and hung it on the wall as if it were a great work of fine art by a famous artist. Some were indeed the copies of famous paintings by famous painters I knew. I had cherished and savored them all through December to January and February, until March comes, when I had to dispose of them.
Is Christmas disappearing from us? No, I don't think so, especially for the Christians all over the world. But so far as the ritual of writing Christmas cards is concerned here in Korea now, we have to admit that it has receded significantly and the prospect of its resurgence is not that bright. I have received several cards after Christmas so far, and they are all our traditional New Year cards. And, to my great disappointment, I have recently discovered that real good Christmas cards of old days are really hard to find. Even the quality of the one Christmas card this year from my sister in America was not what it ought to be. It was just funny. I wonder why?
There are many and various conjectures. Some say e-mail has displaced the card writing. Some sigh we all have become so busy that we have no time to bother ourselves to write it. Some lament the decline of writing ability of the young generation. Some philosophize that we have outgrown a foreign influence by becoming prosperous and affluent, and consequently came to cherish our own culture more. Whatever the causes and reasons might be, for me personally, I miss the day when I bought, wrote and received so many Christmas cards. It was when the world seemed slow to move, and I was young full of hope, passion and aspiration, though poor.
(December 30, 2002)
It is even a horror for me who had once, at my best days, received more than a hundreds, and who used to receive about fifty on average until quite recently. Though slow and dull a man I am to the rapid change of the times and tides of the world, I could perceive vaguely that the number of Christmas cards I was receiving was decreasing year by year. But it had never occurred to me that they would ever cease to come at all. This is too much, too sudden and too humiliating for me to stomach. Then, have they all conspired to stop writing Christmas cards to me?
Now I realize belatedly that it is not only the Christmas cards that I missed this year. Where have gone all those familar Christmas carols? They must have been on the radio, or must have flown from the record shops on the streets, but I have no memory of them. The small Christmas tree in the coffee shop I frequent almost every day after lunch was not lit this year. My wife who used to set it up every year early in December without fail failed even to bring it out; it is still in the box. Given the fact that all my children have grown up and left us, and we had that all important and uproarious presidential election on the 19th of December this year, this plain negligence or neglect of Christmas paraphernalia might as well be understood or forgiven, but definitely leave something much to be desired for me.
Look! O, my God. I am the very culprit who is responsible for the silent and quiet Christmas. I have not bought any Christmas cards nor written to anyone. The only card I wrote this year was to my elder sister as an answer to hers. And I must confess here with shame and guilt that I had not done it in the true spirit of Christmas. I did not buy the card to begin with. I found it by chance between the leaves of a book. It was one of the leftover cards I had bought years before. Had it not been for it, this year could have been the first Christmas in my life without writing a Christmas card since I started to write it when I was a small country boy.
In retrospect, it was not so once. Christmas used to begin even early in November, when the familiar Christmas carols began to overflow from the radio, from the record shops on the streets, and when the Christmas cards were displayed in profuse quantity everywhere in front of all the stationery shops and at a corner of department stores. The appearance of Christmas carols and cards, along with the charity bells of the Salvation Army ringing on the streets, was the earliest and the unmistakable harbinger of Christmas. Although I was and am not a Christian, I felt the spirit of the holiday to the bone for no specific or particular reasons.
Then I found myself going to downtown to buy the best Christmas cards of the year I could select among so many. It was one of the many works to be done without fail. Before the mountain and in the sea of Christmas cards displayed I knew where to go to find what I wanted to buy: the corner where they sold the foreign cards, that is, cards imported from the United States to be more correct and exact. For certain period of time in our recent history the United States of America meant everything foreign, good, better, and advanced to us, including the Christmas cards. They were so exotic and attractive in their designs, colors, mood and atmosphere. I selected and bought as many as I could pay, and returned home like triumphant soldiers marching home. At home, late at night, I wrote each of them picturing the happy faces of those, one by one, who would receive it with surprise, happiness and appreciation of my refined taste, high aesthetic standard and sincere care and love for them.
And Christmas cards began to arrive in droves and piled up on my desk every day from early in December, from my students home and abroad. Among them those few from abroad, mostly from the United States, attracted my eyes. I used to keep them long after Christmas, sometimes till next Christmas simply because they were so cute and lovely, and I could not throw them away with ease. In some rare cases I have kept one or two of them in a picture frame and hung it on the wall as if it were a great work of fine art by a famous artist. Some were indeed the copies of famous paintings by famous painters I knew. I had cherished and savored them all through December to January and February, until March comes, when I had to dispose of them.
Is Christmas disappearing from us? No, I don't think so, especially for the Christians all over the world. But so far as the ritual of writing Christmas cards is concerned here in Korea now, we have to admit that it has receded significantly and the prospect of its resurgence is not that bright. I have received several cards after Christmas so far, and they are all our traditional New Year cards. And, to my great disappointment, I have recently discovered that real good Christmas cards of old days are really hard to find. Even the quality of the one Christmas card this year from my sister in America was not what it ought to be. It was just funny. I wonder why?
There are many and various conjectures. Some say e-mail has displaced the card writing. Some sigh we all have become so busy that we have no time to bother ourselves to write it. Some lament the decline of writing ability of the young generation. Some philosophize that we have outgrown a foreign influence by becoming prosperous and affluent, and consequently came to cherish our own culture more. Whatever the causes and reasons might be, for me personally, I miss the day when I bought, wrote and received so many Christmas cards. It was when the world seemed slow to move, and I was young full of hope, passion and aspiration, though poor.
(December 30, 2002)
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