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Why Japan eats KFC for Christmas

In Japan, Christmas dinner for many families is a bucket of KFC. How a 1974 ad campaign became a tradition, and what to expect if you’re there in December.

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A street in Shibuya, Tokyo, at night, lit with blue Christmas lights
Photo by Yuika Takamura on Unsplash

On Christmas Eve in Japan, some of the longest lines aren’t outside a church or a department store. They’re outside a fried chicken chain. For many Japanese families, dinner on December 24 is a bucket of KFC. According to the company, it’s the busiest day of the year in Japan, with sales ten times the annual daily average.

There’s nothing religious about it. Only around 1% of Japanese people are estimated to be Christian, and Christmas isn’t even a public holiday. The custom grew out of a 1974 marketing campaign that stuck so well it became part of the calendar.

A Christmas with no traditional meal

Japan started celebrating Christmas as a seasonal event in the late 1960s. According to KFC, families began hosting parties at home after confectionery companies started selling Christmas cakes and sweets for children. It was an imported celebration, with no established dish.

KFC opened its first store in Japan in 1970, in Nagoya, the same year American fast-food chains tested the market at the World Expo in Osaka. Four years later, the company launched its first Christmas campaign: a bucket of fried chicken with a bottle of wine, sold as the meal for a party that wasn’t just for kids, but for grown-ups too.

The company’s own version of the origin story is that the idea came from a remark overheard in a Tokyo store on Christmas Day. A foreign customer supposedly said that, unable to find turkey in Japan, he had no choice but to celebrate with KFC. A member of the sales team heard it and turned it into a slogan: “Kurisumasu ni wa Kentakkii,” or “Kentucky for Christmas.”

Why it worked

The campaign filled a gap. Japanese Christmas had no traditional dinner, and fried chicken, served in a bucket to share, took the place turkey holds in the United States. The message never changed. An executive at the ad agency Ogilvy in Japan told the Financial Times, as quoted by Smithsonian magazine, that the campaign lasted so long because it always said the same thing: at Christmas, you eat chicken. According to the same report, the appeal had less to do with religion than with the “Americanness” and simplicity of the message. Japan is known for taking foreign products and ideas and adapting them to local tastes, and Japanese Christmas became a commercial, non-religious celebration with plenty of spending on decorations, dinners and gifts.

Over time, the ritual picked up details. The Colonel Sanders statues outside stores get dressed as Santa. There’s a special roast chicken, locally sourced, stuffed with cheese and mushrooms and baked in the store, made only for the season. The party bucket gets a new design every year and comes with a commemorative plate inside. And orders start early: the company begins advertising and taking Christmas reservations as early as late October.

The Christmas Eve line

If you don’t book, you queue. In 2012, Smithsonian reported waits of up to two hours on Christmas Eve, with office staff and even company executives heading to stores to help serve customers. In Japan, the date that matters is the 24th: the 25th is an ordinary working day.

If you’re in Japan in December

  • Want to try it? Order ahead. Reservations open in late October.
  • Avoid the 24th without a booking. It’s the busiest day of the year, and the line can be long.
  • Don’t expect a day off on the 25th. Shops and offices run as usual.
  • Enjoy the lights. Even without a holiday, Japanese cities dress up for Christmas, and neighborhoods like Shibuya in Tokyo get special illuminations.

If it’s your first trip, it’s also worth reading why tipping can embarrass the person you’re tipping in Japan. A bucket of chicken, after all, is far less strange to Japanese people than a banknote left on the table.

Sources

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