How Japan Celebrates Christmas: Fried Chicken, Strawberry Cake, and a Day That Isn't a Holiday

In Japan, Christmas Day falls on a Friday this year, and most people will go to work.

That surprises almost everyone who hasn’t spent a December here. The streets are decorated for weeks, shops play carols, there are Christmas cakes in every convenience store — and yet the 25th itself is a normal day. The holiday that closes offices and sends people home to their families comes a week later, at New Year.

What Japan does with Christmas is borrow it, and make it its own. Here’s how that looks from this side of the Pacific, with sources — and what it means if you’re ordering a gift from a Japanese shop in December.

Not a holiday

Japan’s national holidays are set by law, and the Cabinet Office publishes the list each year. For 2026 it lists sixteen national holidays plus two substitute days off, from New Year’s Day to Labor Thanksgiving Day on 23 November. There are none in December (Cabinet Office, national holidays, in Japanese).

So Christmas is something people fit around a working week. The celebrating mostly happens in the evening, and mostly on the 24th.

The bucket of chicken

The most famous Japanese Christmas tradition started as an advertising campaign.

KFC’s own account is that Japanese families began celebrating Christmas in the late 1960s, largely as parties for children, helped along by confectioners promoting Christmas sweets. In 1974, KFC Japan launched a campaign selling a bucket of chicken with a bottle of wine, pitched as a Christmas party for adults, not only children. The idea, KFC says, came from a sales-team member who overheard a foreign customer in Tokyo say he couldn’t get turkey in Japan, so he’d celebrate with Kentucky Fried Chicken instead. The tagline was Kurisumasu ni wa Kentakkii — “Kentucky for Christmas” (KFC, “How Kentucky for Christmas began in Japan”).

It worked. KFC says 24 December is now its busiest day of the year in Japan, around ten times its annual average, and that KFC Japan starts taking pre-orders for Christmas as early as late October. Colonel Sanders statues outside the restaurants wear Santa outfits.

The strawberry cake

The other fixture is the Christmas cake — and in Japan that almost always means a strawberry shortcake: light sponge, whipped cream, strawberries on top. Red and white.

It didn’t start that way. Fujiya, the confectioner founded in Yokohama in November 1910, is credited with selling Japan’s first Christmas cake that December. It was a fruitcake. Fujiya first sold shortcake in 1922 (Nihon no Furuhon-ya, “Fujiya at 110”, in Japanese). The strawberry version became the standard later, and today bakeries, department stores and convenience stores all take Christmas cake orders weeks in advance.

Gifts, and the other year-end custom

Christmas presents exist in Japan — for children, and between partners and close friends — but they aren’t the only gift of the season. Japan has an older year-end custom called oseibo: gifts sent in December to people you owe thanks to, such as clients, a boss, or relatives. Traditional oseibo gifts are practical and consumable — beer, ham, sausages, cooking oil — and corporate year-end gifts are typically sent early enough in December to avoid the last-minute rush (Japan Intercultural Consulting, “Oseibo winter gift-giving in Japan”).

So in a Japanese department store in December you’ll see both side by side: glittering Christmas displays, and neat rows of oseibo gift boxes. One is a celebration; the other is a thank-you.

Then everything stops for New Year

The week after Christmas is when Japan actually takes its holiday. Offices close, people travel home, and the first days of January are for family, shrines and the New Year meal. Many businesses shut from the last days of December into the first week of January.

What this means if you’re ordering from Japan

If you’re buying a Christmas gift from a Japanese shop, the rhythm above matters more than you’d think.

• The slowdown is at New Year, not Christmas. Discovery Japan Mall, for example, was closed from 27 December 2025 to 4 January 2026, and said orders placed in that window would ship after 5 January (Discovery Japan Mall, 2025–2026 holiday schedule).
• December in Japan is busy. Christmas and oseibo shipping overlap in the same weeks.
• Order early. Mid-November gives you room. The details, including who pays duties, are in ordering from Japan in time for Christmas.

And if you’d like the gift itself to come from Japan, Christmas gifts from Japan gathers everything on this site by who it’s for and what you want to spend.

Sources

Checked 16 September 2026.

• Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, National holidays (Japanese): the 2026 list.
• KFC, How “Kentucky for Christmas” began in Japan: the 1974 campaign, its origin story, and 24 December as KFC Japan’s busiest day.
• Nihon no Furuhon-ya (日本の古本屋), Fujiya at 110 (Japanese, December 2020): Fujiya’s founding, first Christmas cake in 1910 and first shortcake in 1922.
• Japan Intercultural Consulting, Oseibo winter gift-giving in Japan (last updated May 2025): what oseibo is and typical gifts.
• Discovery Japan Mall, Year-End Holiday Shipping Schedule 2025–2026.