I arrived in Korea in 1990, just two weeks shy of Christmas. When my recruiter called in early October to offer me a teaching position at ELS (YBM Sisa) starting in December, she framed the offer as if she were handing me a gift with a tiny catch: Yes, you’ll be far from home for the holidays … but you probably won’t feel homesick. Having spent several Christmases away during my military days, I wasn’t worried. I figured homesickness was like the flu — inevitable now and then, but survivable. What I didn’t expect was that my first Christmas in Korea would become one of the best Christmases of my life. Back in 1990, celebrating Christmas in Seoul was an entirely different experience from the Seoul of December today. There were no Daiso stores displaying shelves of ornaments, no Costco warehouses selling Christmas trees the size of small redwoods, no Starbucks cafes piping out carols as early as November and certainly no holiday plazas, winter festivals or synchronized light shows blanketing the city the way they do now. Hotels didn’t advertise Christmas buffets the size of