Merry Christmas from your friend in Japan! We hope you are having a warm and wonderful special day, wherever you are in the world. In this post, I want to explore Japan and Christmas, and why the holiday feels so strange when viewed through Japan’s cultural lens.
Great news! To celebrate all the awesome new doujin titles J-List has gotten in stock after the recent C107 Comiket doujinshi event, we’re having a flash doujinshi sale! Through January 14, get 15% off automatically on all shipping-from-Japan doujin titles. Start browsing here!
Why Does Christmas in Japan Feel Strange?
Every country takes holidays like Christmas and makes them its own, adding local foods, customs, and a deeper cultural meaning to create something new. Japan is no exception. However, for various reasons, Christmas in Japan can feel quite a bit shallow and artificial. In this post, let’s examine some of the reasons Christmas in Japan is so different from other parts of the world.
Christmas Is a Recent Import from the West
While most of us grew up in countries where Christmas was the most important day of the year culturally, this isn’t the case in Japan. In fact, non-Christians living in Japan probably didn’t think about December 25th at all until toy companies started advertising toys this time of year, which happened with the opening of Toys “R” Us in Japan in the early 1990s. Mrs. J-List never even had a Christmas tree until she married an American.
It’s common for culturally important days in one country to be imported and transformed by other countries. Halloween began as a relatively obscure Celtic festival to ward off ghosts. It crossed the Atlantic with Irish and Scottish immigrants, where it became the huge celebration of all things spooky it is today. St. Patrick’s Day followed a similar path: originally a modest religious observance in Ireland, it became a major public festival celebrating Irish-ness in America, before being re-exported back to its country of origin. Cinco de Mayo is another example, giving Americans an excuse to drink and eat Mexican food without bothering much with the history behind the date.
A more recent example of a “holiday” getting mass adoption around the world is Black Friday, a day to celebrate shopping and commercialism after the American holiday of Thanksgiving. But countries around the world have picked up the event, having big sales at the end of November. Japan caught the Black Friday bug, too, to the point that shipping companies have trouble dealing with the huge volume of packages being shipped. It even causes delays for J-List, making it hard to restock the naughty products our customers want to buy.
Marketing and Kentucky Fried Chicken Changed Christmas Forever
Here’s a question: why is Santa’s suit red-and-white? Because these are the colors of Coca-Cola, of course. As the cultural image of modern Santa Claus evolved from the 4th-century Greek Saint Nicholas, who traditionally gave gifts to children, through the Dutch pronunciation of Sinterklaas, and into the modern image of “Santa-san” (as he’s known in Japan), marketing played a huge role. The image of the man as a fat, kind-hearted man wearing his trademark red-and-white suit was largely the result of a highly influential marketing campaign by Coca-Cola that ran from 1931 to 1964.
In a similar way, marketing has helped shape how the Japanese think about Christmas. As I’ve written before, Kentucky Fried Chicken was struggling to increase sales in Japan in the 1970s. One day, a kindergarten asked the local KFC branch in Kobe to provide chicken for the children to eat for their Christmas party. This received coverage by a local TV station, in which the manager of the restaurant came up with the idea that Americans love to eat KFC on Christmas. Soon Japanese were stopping off to buy fried chicken so they could enjoy Christmas “just like Americans do.”
Experiencing Christmas Through Anime
As I wrote in my post exploring the history of Megami Magazine, anime production quickly embraced the idea of commissioning high-quality pieces of art to include in magazines to promote a new anime. And it was natural that this artwork took on a Christmas theme for the December issue. As a result of this great tradition, there’s a huge trove of holiday-themed illustrations of your favorite characters on image boards like Danbooru, waiting to be downloaded by fans and used as wallpapers for computers or smartphones.
But because we often experience Japan through its pop culture, this can lead to skewed perceptions about Japan. Japanese don’t actually spend hours looking at scantily-clad images of anime girls wearing Santa costumes on Christmas, but it can certainly feel that way if you’re viewing everything through the internet.
Enjoying Ecchi Christmas Episodes
Anime creators know that making a “Christmas episode” is a popular way to add some seasonal fun to their story. And if it’s an ecchi anime, that’s even better! As a result, people around the world get an even stranger impression of Japan as a country that likes to watch busty girls wearing Santa bikinis doing sexy things.
What are the best anime episodes to re-watch during the Christmas season? Read this blog post next!
Christmas in Japan Is an Excuse to Have a Party
One way of understanding Christmas in Japan is that the roles of Christmas and New Year’s are reversed. In the US, Christmas is a solemn time spent with family and friends, or to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but New Year’s is an excuse to have a loud party. But in Japan, Christmas is the perfect time to have a loud party with lots of food and maybe a karaoke machine, with New Year’s reserved for quiet reflection.
Christmas in Japan Is for Lovers
The most important night for couples is Valentine’s Day, but the second most popular night to go out with that special person on a date is Christmas Eve. Visiting any restaurant on December 24th is a bad idea unless you have reservations, because every place will be full of lovers enjoying a special dinner.
Christmas Is for Listening to Christmas Music, All Winter Long
I do love Christmas music, and listen to the soundtrack from A Charlie Brown Christmas all December long. But it’s quite common for Japanese businesses to keep playing Christmas songs into February. After all, it’s still cold outside, isn’t it?
Christmas in Japan Is Anything but Religious
While I did spend my first Christmas in Japan at a pleasant Baptist church in Maebashi, with a congregation that had warmly reached out to befriend me — and, just as importantly, to make sure they had a proper gaijin to dress up as Santa Claus for the kids — this experience was very much the exception. With only around 1% of Japan’s population identifying as Christian, celebrating Christmas by going to church is a rare occurrence rather than the norm. While many Japanese do attend services on Christmas Eve (since December 25th is a work day in Japan), the religious aspect of Christmas is generally not part of the cultural zeitgeist.
Thanks for reading this blog post exploring some reasons why Christmas in Japan can feel strange. Do you have any thoughts on Japan’s approach to the holiday? Post them in the comments below!
Let’s Chat
You made it to the end of this post! Thank you! As a token of our appreciation, enjoy an extra 5% off your next order when you use the code BLOG at checkout. Also, don’t forget to follow J-List on all our platforms!
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Great news! To celebrate all the awesome new doujin titles J-List has gotten in stock after the recent C107 Comiket doujinshi event, we’re having a flash doujinshi sale! Through January 14, get 15% off automatically on all shipping-from-Japan doujin titles. Start browsing here!
