Knowing that December 25th is not a national
holiday here as only 1% of Japan is Christian, I hardly expected to see any
decorations. I assumed, quite mistakenly as it turns out, that stores would go
about playing synth versions of random American songs from the
1960s-1980s.
I began to realise this would not be the case when I saw how
nuts stores went over Halloween decorations. Despite the fact that many
children here don’t actually trick-or-treat and some don’t even dress up, it
seemed a bit odd that they went all-out with the decorations.
Yet immediately after October 31st, I realised
just how wrong I was in thinking Christmas wouldn't be a massive deal here in
Japan. On November 1st, Christmas lights began to pop up all over
the place, and stores changed their soundtracks to playing Christmas carols of
all kinds on a loop.
While it’s true that many people have no idea what Christmas
actually celebrates, that doesn’t stop them from making merry and participating
in the festivities. They do, however, do some things quite differently than we
do in America.
Most notably, the Japanese don’t view Christmas as a time
for family togetherness, but a day more akin to Valentine's Day. People don’t
look forward to cooking turkey, but rather buying some Kentucky Fried Chicken
to chow down on. Families also look forward to one thing much more than presents
or watching Christmas movies by the fire. No, no. Here, they count down to the
day when they can eat Christmas Cake.
NPR wrote a nice in-depth piece about why they love Christmas Cake so much and what it represents. I can tell you from first hand interaction with Japanese pre teens and teens that they look forward to the cake and their KFC far more than the presents. During one particular assignment in which they had to write what they wanted to do for Christmas, a vast majority wrote "I want to eat Christmas Cake."
Seriously, though, click that article link, it's quite good.
Here are some of my students' interpretations of Christmas:
Here are some of my students' interpretations of Christmas:
No comments:
Post a Comment