With less than 2% of its population declaring themselves as Christian, one would think that Christmas isn't really celebrated much over here in Japan.  Well, it wasn't.  But over the span of time that I have spent in the country, I have seen the celebration of Christmas grow astronomically.  Even my town of Yachiyo had a not too shabby display of Christmas decorations and lights up for all to enjoy.  Now, when I say Christmas, I mean it in the strictest commercial way you could imagine.  You know the Santa type thing (you can even buy a Santa outfit at the 100 yen shop).

What do the Japanese do at Christmas?  It is kind of humorous actually.  The day itself isn't a holiday but that hasn't stopped Japan from adopting its own Christmas traditions.  December 23rd is a national holiday to celebrate the Emperor's birthday but amongst the Christmas hustle, no one really seems to pay much attention to that.  I will cover the three biggies.

At Christmas time it is pretty much a given that you eat cake over here.  It's called Christmas cake but the standard is more of a shortcake with icing and strawberries.  Of course there are fancier cakes too but I have looked and I have been unable to find anything that resembles what we refer to as Christmas cake at home.  Needless to say, the cake market goes crazy at this time of year.  And so do the prices (but then again cake at any other time of the year over here is expensive too).  Yuki's work bought all of the staff a cake to take home (see picture).  Was it good?  Oh yeah!  Was it worth 50 bucks?  I guess that depends on who you are.  Cakes that can't be sold by Christmas day go on sale in a desperate attempt by bakers to clear them out.  This custom has led to unmarried women over 25 years of age being referred to as Christmas cakes because a girl over 25 is supposed to be married and is thereby harder to "get rid of".

Until recently it was rare to see an oven in a Japanese house.  In a country with 1/20th the land of Canada and 4 times the population, there just wasn't the room.  No ovens = no turkey.  But KFC has a presence in every big city. I would say a much bigger presence than in Canada.  No one has confirmed the relationship between the Christmas turkey custom, but in  Japan, a surprisingly large amount of people eat Kentucky Fried Chicken for Christmas.  To merrily greet the customers coming in to buy their chicken, a statue of the colonel is dressed up as Santa Claus and placed in front of every KFC for the month of December.

The third custom and most interesting to me, is the Christmas Eve custom over here.  Christmas Eve is a day to be with your sweetheart and not having a date for Christmas is enough to give Japanese girls a complex.  But a Christmas Eve date is nothing to be taken lightly.  I read an article that said that during the financial bubble of the 80's, the average young man would easily blow a couple thousand bucks on dinner, European car rental and a fancy hotel room for the night.  I have no statistics on how much is spent by the recession hit youth of today but Christmas Eve is still reported as being the most profitable day of the year for the love hotel industry (see page on love hotels). 

The lights and decorations seem to increase in numbers every year but I imagine that Christmas in Japan will continue to be a taste of the western commercial Christmas.  I wonder if westerners will start a trend to celebrate Buddhist holidays and have Buddhist style weddings?