Christmas

Christmas is almost upon us. You might suppose that Japan - which is not a Christian nation and does not make a national holiday out of Christmas - would hardly bother to celebrate it at all. However, Western holidays are appropriated with enthusiasm, particularly when there is a marketing and/or decorating opportunity associated with it. ^_^

On November 1st, it's down with the Hallowe'en decorations and up with the Christmas. Some stores will start their soul-destroying Christmas carols at this time; others wait until December. Unfortunately there are many, many carols, usually in English, although Japanese versions of many carols also exist.

In Japan, New Year is the biggest holiday, and has some parallels with our Christmas - it's often spent with family, people go to religious buildings, (in Japan's case, Shinto shrines), people send New Year's cards, children get gifts (money), loads of people have time off and travel.

Christmas in Japan, on the other hand, is more of a romantic holiday for couples. Even more than Valentine's Day, it's a time when young singletons will sigh and wish they had a special someone to spend Christmas with. Apparently Christmas is a popular day for weddings.

However, Christmas Day is still celebrated to some extent by the populace at large. Some people exchange gifts and many parents give gifts to their children, although less excessively than in the West. It's common to have Christmas cake, although Japanese-style Christmas cake is just regular cake decorated with Christmasy themes, rather the rich, heavy fruitcake we would call Christmas cake.

Many popular city hotspots will features 'illuminations' (Christmas lights) which people will go to see in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Some businesses may have Christmas parties (though the 'year end' parties are more of an ingrained phenomenon).

Another custom is to eat chicken on Christmas Day. This is a huge, huge day for KFC. I'm not joking. The places are packed; people pre-order buckets of chicken more than a month in advance. Colonel Sanders will be outside each store wearing his Santa costume. In Japan, it's like 'what do you associate with Christmas? Well, there's Santa Claus... couples... KFC...'

In my case, I'm going back to Australia for the holiday period. Yay summer! I've written a few posts' backlog to post in my absence. I hope you all have a nice Christmas and New Year. ^_^