Why do Japanese people rush to eat fried chicken at Christmas?

When you travel to Japan, you expect to eat delicious sushi, incredible ramen, fantastic foods you’ve never heard of. But the surprise comes when you realize that one of their greatest delicacies is… fried chicken. What’s more! There are KFC everywhere. In the land of rice and healthy food, everyone loves to eat junk food at Christmas. But, can anyone explain why?

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Ho, ho, yum

Japan is a country of trends, and this one was no exception: only from December 20 to 25, they earn about 63 million dollars selling chicken to families who patiently wait at the door. In fact, there are figures of Colonel Sanders with Christmas hats in every nook and cranny. To understand the reason, we have to go back to 1970, when the country, after recovering from World War II, began to open up to the world and accept Western franchises. It was then that KFC opened its first location in Nagoya. And it didn’t stop.

Four years later, they launched the “Kentucky for Christmas” campaign, which, according to them, came from a foreign customer who said that, in the absence of being able to eat turkey at Christmas, they would eat KFC chicken. The campaign was very aggressive, and it made the song My Old Kentucky Home popular as a Christmas carol (even though it has nothing to do with Christmas in the United States). Eating at KFC, especially if you lived in a town, was trendy, it was modern, it was the thing to do. And somehow, 50 years later, the Japanese are still lining up at KFCs to try fast food that they could also eat at any time of the year. Nothing says Christmas like a breaded chicken strip, apparently.

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