Now this was what I was talking about (from Vancouver, CN The Georgia Straight):
Sex and Chicken Make Christmas in Japan
With Jesus out of the way, Colonel Santa can pitch his Kentucky Fried Christmas cake. Kimberley O’Donnell photo.
Imagine this: your Christmas list is cut down to zero people. Instead of spending Christmas Eve arguing with your siblings about who qualifies as the true black sheep of the family, you go out on a date, eat a gourmet meal, and then toddle off to a nice hotel room for some cozy, romantic, Christmas sex.
There are no carollers, no treacly Christmas specials on the TV, no ghastly plum pudding and mince tarts. There is no necessity to display Christmas cheer, or to worry unduly about the nasty credit-card bills you ran up buying presents for your ungrateful nieces and nephews. Your only care is the frightening amount of cutlery you will have to negotiate before you get to the yummy crème brûlée, and the possibility of a stray piece of spinach on your teeth somewhat dampening the ardour in your date's eyes.
It's amazing how easy Christmas can be once you take the little baby Jesus out of the picture.
Christmas in Japan is strictly an import product, something cobbled together in response to the influence of American GIs stationed there after the Second World War. The Japanese were intrigued by the spectacle of Christmas--all those pretty lights and that strange fat man in the red suit--but they never bought into the religious origins of the holiday. All the different strands of the Christmas narrative got tangled up like so many errant strings of Christmas lights, resulting in the sign I saw in one department store, featuring a skinny, surfing Santa and the legend "Super Funky Holy Night".
Click here to read the rest of the article. Almost makes me whish I had stayed there for Christmas.
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