Articles with Christmas

The Christmas Dilemma

I never know what to buy people for Christmas.  It’s just two weeks until Christmas, and I still don’t know what to buy for a couple of family members.  Sure, I could always get them a gift card from their favorite store, but what’s the fun in that?  Sometimes it’s easy enough to figure what to buy people.  However, sometimes I can’t figure out what they need or want at a reasonable price.  How many small ticket items do people need?  Can’t I just buy them one really expensive gift and let that be their for the next six Christmases?

Christmas may be losing its meaning amidst all the commercialism.  The frantic search for the perfect gift, the muddling through the crowds at the mall, or the quick online purchase definitely do not define the meaning of Christmas.  Christmas has become overly materialistic and sanitized.  It has been adopted as a national holiday and is observed by people throughout the world who are not Christian.  The focus of Christmas has increasingly shifted towards Santa and what gifts he’ll bring, about families reuniting, about expressing love through a purchased product, and goodwill towards men.  While these are good and noble endeavors, they overshadow Christmas’ true meaning.  Christmas is a birthday celebration for Jesus, a carpenter from the Galilee region born about 4 B.C.  It’s been said that his actual birthday would have been in April based on the timing Roman Census that required his parents to journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem prior to his birth.  That would mean Jesus’ actual birthday would be sometime around Easter.  If Christmas is replaced by Xmas or Winter Break or Happy Holiday then perhaps the observance of Jesus’ birthday should be moved to a day closer to the actual day of his birth.  This would reassert the meaning of the holiday without all the commercialistic trappings of Christmas.  The date of Christmas has much to do with the ancient Druid celebration of Winter Solstice.  Moving the date celebrating Jesus’ birth would put it more in line with celebrating it on the actual date of his birth.

This Darn Korean Language

Today is a beautiful day, and my family is out and about shopping for Christmas, but I am here studying Korean.  (OK, well I took some time out to write on my blog.)  I stayed here by choice.  Our second Korean language progress test is next Tuesday, and I need all the preparation I can get.  My wife is taking the same course, but she doesn’t need to study as much as I do.  She is a natural when it comes to learning languages.  She is also a native Chinese speaker, and it definitely helps her when Korean uses so much Chinese vocabulary.  About 60% of Korean words are derived from Chinese.  What sets Korean apart from Chinese is the grammar and structure.  Chinese is a Subject-Verb-Object language, whereas Korean is Subject-Object-Verb (as is Japanese).  Korean, like Japanese, also uses numerous levels of speech politeness, whereas Chinese uses far fewer levels.  In this respect, Chinese is much closer to English.  In Korean the grammar patterns used when speaking to an elderly person is far different (and longer) than patterns used with children (short and blunt).

Unlike my wife, I am struggling in Korean.  Much of it is plain old rote memorization.  Word association (using English to easily remember a word) only goes so far, and after awhile all the words start looking and sounding alike.  Fortunately, the Korean language system is alphabetic, so it’s much easier to write than either Chinese or Japanese.  Nevertheless, Korean pronunciation may among the most difficult for native English speakers.  The U.S. government classifies languages by level of learning difficulty vis-a-vis English, and Korean is one of the four most difficult languages for English speakers to learn (as well as Arabic, Chinese, and Korean).  It requires you to contort your voice in ways you may have never done before.  That, and the pronunciation of a word changes depending on what word follows it.  For example, water is pronounced “mul” by itself (물).  If it is a subject it is pronounced “muri” (물이), and if it is an object it is pronounced “murir” (물을).  Speaking Korean is a verbal gymnastics exercise for a native English speaker.  I have even more respect now for those who master Korean and Japanese.  I often whine about learning Korean, but I know I’ll make it through.  I just want to be able to communicate adequately once we’re in Korea.  I don’t need to be a Korean scholar.

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