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> While millions do celebrate Christmas with KFC, others in Japan treat it as a romantic holiday similar to Valentine’s Day, and couples mark the occasion with
by mkl95 5y ago
> While millions do celebrate Christmas with KFC, others in Japan treat it as a romantic holiday similar to Valentine’s Day, and couples mark the occasion with dinner in upscale restaurants. For other Japanese families, Christmas is acknowledged but not celebrated in any particular way.
It seems strange at first, but it makes sense when you consider only about 1.5% of Japanese people are Christians. Christmas as we know it in countries with a Christian majority doesn't mean much to them.
- chrisseaton 5y ago> It seems strange at first Why would it seem strange at first that a country that isn’t very Christian would not celebrate Christmas? Why would they?
- LeoPanthera 5y agoI'm pretty sure this is objectively not true. Christmas is only a religious holiday if you're already religious, and even then, you're ignoring the fact that today's "Christmas" is mostly an assemblage of traditions "borrowed" from other earlier religions. To a lot of people (and I tentatively claim most people, probably) Christmas is either a mostly or entirely secular holiday, celebrating family and the coming of lighter days after the winter solstice, the southern hemisphere notwithstanding.
- netrus 5y agoI never realized that Christmas is right after the winter equinox (or never connected these two dates), but it makes a lot of sense, thank you very much!
- brudgers 5y agoIn the northern hemisphere it follows the winter solstice. In the other half of the world it’s the start of summer.
- naniwaduni 5y agoNote that other half of the world has like, 15% of the humans.
- brudgers 5y agoGetting close to a billion souls.
- quesera 5y agoYou might also be interested to learn that Easter is a fertility festival! Christianity was a hard sell back a couple thousand years ago, so it was often simpler to just coopt existing pagan holidays.
- anjbe 5y ago> Easter is a fertility festival! That’s a common myth. In most languages (English being an exception), Easter’s name is derived from Passover. Eggs and bunnies are a later development, but through medieval Christian traditions, not pagan fertility connections. Much is made of the fact that in English, the name “Easter” comes from Ēostre, a pagan goddess. But that’s accepted to have happened because the holiday falls within the month Germanics named after her. Easter isn’t co‐opting Ēostre worship any more than Good Friday co‐opts worship of Frigg.