We don’t celebrate Christmas.
Tags: Christmas Tree, Christmas, Memories, Personal, Childhood

We don’t celebrate Christmas. I sleep, wake up, get ready (or not), eat breakfast by myself or maybe with my mom sitting beside me (no rush to open the presents under the tree because there are no presents, and more importantly, no tree); then usually go to church and take mass. But in 2020, I did not go to mass and became less of a Catholic than I ever have. My parents cook for other families. Other families that open the presents from under the tree; other families that have a Christmas tree; other families that are more American, happy, have the holiday spirit, and understand the idea of Christmas other than it being Jesus’s birthday.

We don’t celebrate Christmas. We celebrate the annual day to say “Merry Christmas” to one another, but we don’t celebrate Christmas. We are Korean Americans. Actually, we are a collective group of Korean parents with American children. See the difference? There is no solid reason why we don’t celebrate Christmas, but it just turned out that way; and I have gotten to accept that, mainly after last year.

We just don’t celebrate Christmas. When I was four or so, I distinctly remember asking Santa for an iPad. It was a huge request being only four, and being the year 2008 of the American depression, but what could I have known about such adult-ish issues? What I awoke to was a Clifford stuffed dog. Not even a solid, big enough, stuffed toy to hold, just some silicon ball filled hand sized Clifford toy. Then there was this one time when I was younger, after the Clifford episode, where I remember being in Southern California with my family, in a restaurant. We were eating breakfast and my dad stepped out. He was gone roughly for about, twenty minutes or so. My mom had told my brother and I that he went to Target; very blunt she was, nothing to hide, and certainly had no element of surprise. My dad came back later with Target gift cards for both my brother and I, along with the scent of a cigarette from his clothes. That was the last extravagant Christmas I had.

We, the family of Korean parents and American children, don’t celebrate Christmas. Being the naïve child I was, when I was younger, I used to bring out the Christmas tree, a fake Christmas tree, and assemble it myself. I wanted my whole family to join me on this activity, though they never did and I eventually gave up after three years. I remember grabbing the large, green, heavy-duty Tupperware box from the cold, Christmas-winter ridden garage and bringing it into the dark, empty living room. A child grabbed out all the metal pieces, fake branch by fake branch, and began the annual festivities of building the tree alone. It was her tradition, not her family’s. I wanted to celebrate Christmas like everyone else, whoever everyone else was. I wanted the evergreen Christmas tree, I wanted to put the tree together with the ornaments, I wanted the wrapping of gifts, I wanted the gifts under the tree. I wanted gifts under the tree so badly, that I, and I alone again, wrapped an empty tissue box and set it under the fake tree, the same tree that I assembled alone again, just so I could mimic the feeling of having gifts under the tree.

As I reminisce in my naïve childhood years of never really celebrating Christmas, I end this story with how I spent this year’s Christmas Day. I woke up at around 3 pm, as I fell asleep late due to it being winter break, then I watched Ranboo’s Twitch stream, ate the remainder of the bag of chips I opened last night, laid in bed, and did my makeup. I finally left my room at around 6pm, I went downstairs to cook some dinosaur chicken nuggets, cooked some potatoes to eat alongside the nuggets: that was my first and only meal of the day. I then headed back upstairs to my room, laid on my bed and on my phone swapping from the three apps of YouTube, Tiktok and Instagram, was pulled out of my room at around 11pm by my dad who wanted to tell my brother and I: don’t think you are entitled to a new phone every time the option of trading your current phone in comes around. Then I went back to bed and wrapped up my Christmas night writing this journal entry. Though it pains my heart, the heart of the little girl who built the tree alone, it’s okay. After all, we don’t celebrate Christmas.