In some ways, Japanese people celebrate Christmas equally as much as we do in the UK, in other ways they don't celebrate it at all. Basically, if you take all of the things about Christmas that you have found too tacky and annoying to cope with since the age of about 7, then do away with all of the nice and meaningful things about it, throw in a cardboard bucket of cardboard tasting KFC chicken and you have Christmas in Japan!! Delightful!!
The cheap and tacky sparkling and flashing decorations arrive in the shops just as early as they do in the UK (mid-October??) and lights (actually some pretty impressive ones) hijack shopping centres and city high streets, and indeed some people's houses...not bad for a non-Christian nation. Japanese versions of "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" fill the air and cheap, super-ecstatic happy Christmas adverts (and Japanese adverts and pretty cheap and pretty happy all through the year) fill the airtime. Signs with pictures of Santa and reindeer etc. can be found in almost every shop and all the kids were doing Christmas crafts at primary school (probably even more so than I ever remember doing when I was at school), not that that stopped my last English lesson with EVERY class being another Christmas craft lesson. I don't mean to sound like a Scrooge, and we did have fun in the lessons (making card, snowflakes, carboard stockings and Christmas crackers) but the whole affair really is a bit of an overkill, especially considering what Christmas actually means to Japanese people...roughly nothing.
On a side note, can't put pictures of my kids up, but this is Christmas crackers at the adult class...think that's allowed. Christmas crackers really is my favourite class to teach all year, I'm only pretending to be a Scrooge to fit my sarcastic blog...I would recommend it to any ALT, it's a great lesson, even my little terrors of a 4th grade (perfect age for it) love me after that one!
For instance, ask a classroom of children (or indeed a staffroom of adults) which date Christmas Day is and you get responses ranging from the 21st to the 27th or so...ask them what they actually do to celebrate the day (bearing in mind this day already spans a week) and most people will either say "nothing much" or "we eat Christmas cake". OK, some kind of tradition that links everybody's Christmas together..."And what is Japanese Christmas cake like?" I ask, expecting a clear answer (not like our Christmas fruit cake though because that would be far too authentic), but no, I get a different response from every person "sponge cake!" "cake with cherry icing", "chocolate cake", "short cake" "....cake" (insert cake name and I'm sure somebody in Japan considers it to be traditional Christmas cuisine. And what is the traditional Christmas meal pray tell? KFC!! KFC!! Not even a posh Japanese fast food restaurant like Freshness Burger...a greasy cardboard box of deep fried chicken. When and how this came about is a mystery to me, although I am willing to bet that it is something to do with the Colonel from the adverts looking a little bit like Father Christmas. Also, the life-sized (meaning he's human-sized, I'm not sure he is the same size as the actual original Colonel...just a disclaimer in case some Kentuckian does me for false advertising) white plastic statue of the Colonel who stands outside every (I think) KFC in Japan is dressed up as Santa for the Christmas period (ie late August until December 22nd probably). If you don't believe me....
Well the KFC Colonel Saunders Claus statue is pretty cute, and if you've got cute, you've got 99% of Japan eating out of your hands, or your cardboard buckets in his case.
Understandably, this Christian festival is a normal working day in the Buddhist and Shinto country of Japan, and understandably nobody does anything much special to celebrate, but not so understandably is why everybody sells, buys, makes, sings and talks Christmas crap for two months prior to the non-existant celebration, happening in various houses, if at all, on any day towards the end of December. It seems very strange to make such a fuss over something that is not really celebrated when it comes down to it and something for which most of my students at least, have no idea why it is even there. "Is it Santa's birthday?" "Is it because Santa is nice and chose to give us presents in December?" "Is it Mark's birthday? (2 younger kids actually guessed that, I was tempted to say yes, but they all would have believed me and the teacher might have too so it seemed a bit too cruel, and ever so slightly blasphemous). Anyway, I've taught them all a little bit about Jesus, which they can forget in time for next year so that somebody else can teach them again! I have long since given up trying to work out why Japan is the way it is and this is the exact sort of baffling reason why...Christmas in Japan is finger-licking bad.
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