They don’t wish you a Merry Christmas — And that’s okay
By: Cássio S. Amorim
Tags: Japan, Christmas, Holidays, Study In Japan, Study Abroad

Santa Claus Riders in Nagoya, in a campaign for Child Abuse Prevention (Orange Ribbon JP)

When you move abroad, be it for study or living, you probably are already considerably open to a different culture, including different and new festivities that might be foreign to you. While such new experiences are generally welcome, not everyone thinks much about how some festivities they are used to might be lacking or completely different in other cultures. Among various festivals, Christmas possibly epitomizes the oxymoron of being semi-ubiquitous, and yet completely different everywhere, leaving almost every international student or newly ex-pat with a bag of misplaced expectations. When I came to Japan, I believed I knew about how Christmas is different everywhere, but in reality, I didn’t.

Before coming to Japan, I had already heard that Japanese couples go on a Christmas date and eat a Christmas cake, and I had seen Christmas scenes from Japanese media too. Not knowing the country yet, and being surrounded by Christmas every year, I supposed they celebrated Christmas differently, and I tried to be open to that. Well, making Christmas a “couples’ day” did sound like blasphemy for me, but then, not being their faith, I guess I couldn’t criticize, though. Yet, the truth that I found here was shockingly different: Christmas is not a holiday, a large amount (sometimes most) of people do not know Christmas is on December 25th (they think it’s 24th), they don’t seem to buy gifts in general, only a few seem to buy the cake, and nobody wishes you a merry Christmas. In fact, most of them don’t really care at all, even if they know about it. So, if Christmas is important to you, probably nobody will even understand or imagine why it is so. And depending on where your friends are from, they might not share your feelings either.

Japanese Christmas Cake

Furthermore, mild indifference is not the only clash of worlds one is bound to see. While much of the world is familiar with the Home Alone scenic Christmas in Chicago or New York, and other Hollywood productions ringing bells with a pretty snowfall in the background, that is not how much of the world actually lives Christmas. Nevertheless, inhabitants of snowy Northern countries react with dismay and disbelief to the idea of every year enjoying the sun and beach during the Christmas season. And there we have the whole world open to the idea of a snow-white Christmas, but not to a tropical colored one. All of sudden, life-long Christmas experiences for much of the world’s population is actually declared invalid – “this is not Christmas.” – Curiously, some Northerners never even thought of a non-white Christmas, despite having surely learned basic geography and how seasons work in school. And naturally, those who live in cold Christmas don’t agree on their food and rites. Christmas, then, links many different cultures under disparate manifestations in a unique but twisting way. We expect union, yet sometimes, in the end, divisions may sharpen.

Throughout my years in Japan, I’ve met students and researchers from many countries, some had already lived away from home before coming to Japan. Those who can afford it go back home during this season. But many if not most can’t afford it. I have heard people who lived abroad saying that professors invited foreign colleagues to join their families for Christmas. In Japan, however, this just wouldn’t happen. Nor will your Japanese friends or friends from other countries who simply do not share the same Christmas background — and there may be many!

In my first year, I didn’t give much thought to that matter before leaving home, mainly because there was nothing I could do worrying about it. As winter closed in and my health deteriorated, I was growing hopeless with the vanishing amount of Christmas invitations; clearly, Christmas was not a thing in Asia. They do prepare Christmas Illuminations in big commercial venues, but that’s that. The point is that the country doesn’t share the same Christian background (or Yule, or whatever European tradition), so most of them never heard about Advent or Jesus’s birth story, and are therefore clueless about when the Christmas season even is (for those unaware, Christmas arrangements — the Advent — start 4 Sundays before December 25th, and Christmas season ends on January 5th — the Epiphany eve). But since during the first year we are surrounded by a relatively foreign-friendly atmosphere, things are not all that bad. Some friends will wish you a Merry Christmas, and you may end up at some Christmas party. In the end, I had two Christmas celebrations.

The first one was held at YWCA in Tokyo, where a group of Japanese women volunteers as Japanese Mothers for international students. I had (and still do) a Japanese Mother who invited me to their Christmas celebration. However, it is worth pointing that, since it is Japan and Christmas is not a holiday, this celebration happened before Christmas. I do not remember much of that party, but I think it was less of a Christmas party and more of a Christmas thematic party. It didn’t differ from other parties except for the Christmas decoration. The drinks were the always-present green tea, oolong tea, coke, orange juice, and calpis (a Japanese milk-based sweet beverage). The snacks were the same cookies that every store sells all year round. There may or may not have been a cake there. In other words, it was a party near Christmas, but not really a Christmas party, and that is how they do.

Now, luckily, I had a Brazilian friend with whom I chatted often and we had already shared impressions on Japanese Christmas, and we decided to do our Christmas dinner together. I would cook something, he wanted to roast a chicken leg (that’s the best he could find here), and we would eat/drink together. It is quite hard to find a turkey or other nice Christmas meal ingredients in Japan, so we had to give in to simpler but still nice food. It also so happened that, on December 24th, he met some Russian friends outside, and their plan was also quite simple — buy food and eat together,— hence he invited the Russians to join us. The Russians, in turn, invited the Khazaks friends to join us too, making us 6 in total. Because many people had returned to their countries for holidays, we could use an open common space in our dorm, on the same floor I lived. As an open area, anyone who passed by could see us, except that no one came around. Well, almost no one. A Hungarian student, who also didn’t go home that season, passed by and my Brazilian pal greeted him. For whatever reason I do not know, that guy actually didn’t talk to most of the other students, only those who were fluent in Japanese as he was, so we never really chatted before, even though he happened to be my neighbor and would sometimes hit my wall repeatedly for unknown reasons (I was startled at first, but later got used to it), though it could be that he was fixing something on the corkboard we had in our rooms. Apparently, his plan for Christmas was to drink alone in his room. I cannot say that I cared for someone who clearly didn’t care about me, but I had nothing against him either (despite the punches on my wall). Learning about his solitude, my friend asked me if we could invite him, to what I obviously didn’t oppose — it was Christmas after all. He joined us and, frankly, to my surprise, he looked jolly. He brought his gin bottle and was smiling, pleasantly joining our conversation. In the end, it became a simple but genuinely joyful night. No Christmas tree, no decoration, no illumination, no carols, no prayers, no big feast. But despite the cold, it became a warm and gracious night, with a small feast, and a transformation from a no-plan low-key evening into a nice celebration with friends that turned out to remain my only solid recordation from that winter, despite my diabetes-impaired memory. Indeed, I can’t recall my New Year’s Eve, which I take as a sign that my Christmas went well then. Oh, and I even became friends with my Hungarian neighbor.

In the end, we must learn to get used to having Christmas sidelined as a celebration. In Japan, it is just a normal day where people go to work doing their business. I have both taken and given classes (as Teaching Assistant) in Christmas, and once, when I asked the professor in charge of the class I taught whether I should say “Merry Christmas!” to students, he answered me “What? No need! Why?” And as we get this perspective, perhaps for the first time for many, we are forced to remember that we may also be sidelining important celebrations for other people. We may miss the human warmth of Christmas in Japan, but we can learn about their valuable festivities like Obon or even Japanese New Year (Shōgatsu), which is nothing like the Western New Year. So, at some point, we can understand that they do not really wish you a Merry Christmas — and that’s actually okay.