A Cake for Every Occasion: Holidays far from Home

Take that, snowman cake.

I was meeting Faith for dinner. Her boyfriend Ty would be DJing later that night, and we were grabbing a bite before going to the show. I waited beside a Baskin Robbins, where a woman stood outside in the freezing cold, chanting desperate advertising mantras into a microphone as steam gushed from her gaping mouth. She was telling every passersby, in her strained and quivering tones, about the very many cakes they could buy inside, each themed for the season. Each of them named in a nebulous massacre of Konglish, to the point that she was basically speaking English in some profane accent. At some point she may well have developed hypothermia, and just went on shaking and trembling and gesticulating at those who wandered near. When Faith arrived, she had on reindeer antlers and attached an ornament to my collar, to be festive.

It was Christmas Eve in Korea.

The Love of the Cookie Stick: Pepero Day (뻬뻬로 데이)

Anthropomorphized cookie sticks feel the blush of first love.

In South Korea, November 11 is Pepero Day, named for the eponymous chocolate-dipped cookie stick (called it Pocky, much like one could call the East Sea the Sea of Japan, and prepare to be seethed at). It is, apparently, an actual thing, and was reportedly started by a teeming horde of Korean middle school girls somewhere. They began gifting each other Pepero sticks on November 11 (11/11, because that’s four Peperos together) so that they might one day grow up to be tall and slender, like the candy. And, one presumes, slathered in chocolate syrup of moderate quality. (The irony of giving fattening sweets in order to hope to become skinny and Amazonian is apparently lost on middle schoolers).