Christmas in Japan

It's Christmas Eve here in Japan, and I'm sitting at school, having taught all my classes for the day. If I didn't specifically request to have tomorrow off, I'd be working on Christmas as well. Christmas in Japan is much different than Christmas in America, and I'll tell you how.

All right. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine a traditional American Christmas--a time when couples go out on a romantic date, then stay the night at a fancy hotel. To maintain the true spirit of Christmas, department stores and shopping malls play traditional Christmas songs like Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You and Last Christmas by Wham!

For Christmas dinner, perhaps you've ordered the traditional plate of fried chicken, possibly weeks in advance, from a place like Kentucky Fried Chicken. As the breadwinner of the family, you stop by the store on the way home from work and pick up the Christmas cake, which everybody in the country is eating. Perhaps you even have a Christmas Party lined up, where people will all make Christmas cakes and you'll judge them on taste and design. On the table, along with the cakes and fried chicken, is a plate of sandwiches on white bread with the crusts cut off.

The kids have all left their stockings on their pillow in their bedroom so that Santa, who comes all the way from his home in Finland, will be able to access them easily. Santa will give you your one and only present, and if you're lucky, it'll be something other than a scarf. But you don't really care, since you're going to be getting loads of presents for New Year's Day. Isn't Christmas in America great?

The past two weeks, I've been giving three or four short presentations a day about Christmas in America. I've been just as surprised as the kids have to discover the differences between the traditional American Christmas and the way the Japanese celebrate it, which is obviously what I've described above.

Not even touching on obvious omissions like the Nativity, it really is a different holiday here--much more like Valentine's Day. Everybody knows that Christmas is a western holiday, so all the students and teachers are shocked to hear that their Christmas traditions haven't actually come from America (granted, some of the "traditions" I readily mock may actually be tradition in Europe, but I don't really know--and it's a lot easier to just point and laugh).

Kids here are blown away when I tell them how many presents we traditionally get in America. They're even more shocked when I tell them that we don't exchange presents on New Years. "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehh?" is the universal response. Christmas in America is very similar to New Year's Day in Japan.

Perhaps my favorite part of Christmas festivities this year happened on my island school, Sekizen Junior High. My teacher wanted to sing a popular traditional Christmas song from America, so she chose Wham!'s Last Christmas. Not Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, or Silent Night. George Michael (the singer/songwriter). From England. Singing about how heartbroken he is on Christmas this year, because he gave his heart to someone who he knew so well that she (or he, I guess) didn't even recognize him only a year later.

I think Christmas would be a bit more depressing here if it actually reminded me of what I was missing at home. Sure, I'm sad that I don't get to spend Christmas with our families (though we did get to see Stef's parents just a couple weeks ago, and we opened up presents with them). But I've got Stef, the girls, and the sweet voice of George Michael to soothe my soul.