Christmas

My little tree

It's 4.30am on Christmas morning here in Japan.

Although only a tiny percent of Japanese people are Christian, somehow the holiday has become a tradition over here though somewhat altered.

The Christian part of the holiday is almost completely missing, a few of my student know but generally if you ask them whose birthday is Christmas they will answer "Santa Claus!"

Now, I'm not Christian myself but my country used to be Christian so our tradition has evolved from that. It always seems a little weird that everywhere here is decorated for Christmas without the meaning being known.

It would be like me having some Jewish decorations up and celebrating Hanukkah, and not being able to tell you what it is!

The parts of Christmas that Japan has embraced are:

Decorations. Almost every shop has Christmas lights, wreaths and a tree. Towns and cities also have amazing illuminations. My city usually has this giant light tree that does a music/light show every fifteen minutes but this year it's not there because of construction :(

About half the students say they have a Christmas tree in their house, though they usually mean a small desk one and are always impressed by my pictures of my big tree at home.

Santa Claus. Not just as a character, Japanese kids believe in Santa like western kids do (except we in the UK call him Father Christmas!) Though they get much fewer presents than western kids do, maybe only one or two.

Christmas Dinner. Or a version of it, turkey is unknown here so it tends to be a chicken dinner which leads me nicely into...

Christmas things unique to Japan:

KFC= Christmas Dinner
In possibly the best marketing scheme I've ever heard of, KFC managed to convince an entire nation that western folks go to their fast-food place on Christmas. Yep, forget turkey with all the trimmings, a traditional Japanese Christmas dinner is KFC. The colonel is always dressed up like Father Christmas too.

Christmas Cake: a Japanese Christmas cake is a vanilla sponge cake with white icing and strawberries. I've no idea where it came from, I can only assume it was more clever marketing. The Japanese are often strangely susceptible to advertising, or maybe we are too and its just easier for me to see from a slight distance.

Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve is more important than Christmas Day. New Years Eve in Japan is a traditional family holiday so Christmas Eve has become a romantic day for lovers, not unlike Valentine's Day, which is also recognised here. Bloody couples having more days to make us Singletons feel worse. Bah...humbug.

So there we have it, a traditional Japanese Christmas would consist of decorating your house, going on a date to KFC and having strawberry cake all to celebrate goodwill and the birth of that important gentleman... Santa.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Or if you can see Japanese characters: メリークリスマス！