The little prick has always liked jabbing his finger in our eye, and we rarely call his bluff. Two Christmas Eve's in a row in the early 19080's, when I was in CAG-5 on USS Midway (forward deployed in japan), the slopes amassed on a frozen river that crosses into the south just a couple miles north of the DMZ, so what did we do? Of course, we deployed so we could be in place to attack.
Worse, it wasn't like he hung out long enough so that we could at least bag some traps while we were out. We trapped aboard and then, as Christmas Eve wound down, he stood down, we flew off, and the disruption of pulling in late on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day was complete. Just screwing with us because he knew we wouldn't ignore him. I'm sure it fed his ego. Same as today.