Christmas is Weird. Can Anime Weirdness Save Yuletide?

Christmas is the weird holiday. On the street of holidays that includes Halloween and Thanksgiving, Christmas is the snot-nosed kid with red skivvies jammed near-perpetually up his rear. Christmas is weird.

Christmas traditions are so random that it’s hard to see the holiday for what it is.

You know what you’re getting with Halloween. Ghosts, skeletons, and diabetes-inducing mounds of candy. Easter means bunny girls and chocolate eggs. I was born and raised south of the Sahara, but even I know that Thanksgiving is the day for turkey and pumpkin pie (presumably to satisfy both the carnivores and vegetarians at the table).

How about Christmas? Maybe a roast of some kind, garnished with crackers filled with cheap and useless junk. Maybe. Friends of ours are having sushi and pork ribs for their Christmas dinner. Meanwhile, Goddess Café Terrace remembered a Christmas celebration staple: alcohol.

Hark! The Horny Anime Things

At least anime treats Christmas with the same creative irreverence it treats every subject. Maybe we needed a wakeup slap from a kawaii anime waifu.

Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly (Locally Sourced or Plastic)

Christmas offers a wide and confusing variety of traditions that seem to come from planet Weirdo. Your location and culture usually influence how you celebrate the holidays, but Weirdo Christmas ignores most geographic and political boundaries.

It’s summer on my side of the planet. Yet, despite the heat, there’s fake snow in every window, snowmen on every Christmas tree, and skiing Santas aplenty. I haven’t seen snow in this country for well over twenty years! The Santa throwing the metal horns hand gesture on my kid’s Advent calendar takes the Christmas cake.

Even Japan, with a Christian population smaller than 1 percent of the total, has its own take on Christmas to add to the global mix. Buddhists can get into the Christmas spirit too, ya know.

And I’m down for that.

Away in a Manga, No Crypto for Bread

Like generative AI mind-rot, mind-numbing isekai bloat, and trashimation shorts (remember stick fights?), throw enough crap into the soup and the good inevitably rises to the top. Feed enough Christmas tradition through the global consciousness, and the cognitive flatulence will train our critical eye to spot gold. And anime, with its way of looking at the world, gives us a unique lens on Christmas.

Remember Tokyo Godfathers? Or Shiori in a short Christmas dress in My Tiny Senpai? How about Miss Nagatoro and Christmas dating and gift giving? Anime will keep you guessing.

Forget the world’s efforts to test the elasticity of your wallet and the unchained digestion of foul-shaped proteins. Anime (and it almost always starts in manga) makes Christmas about friends, family, and the special connection between lovers. (And yes, also shopping, but ignore that for the sake of my already thinly stretched logic). Make this Christmas a time to slam on the brakes, Truck-kun style, and contemplate the special connection we have with those weirdos we share our time on earth with.

Merry Christmas, all, from the J-List team.

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