Our unique family Christmas traditions in Japan

For many people, Christmas is one of the most family-filled times of year. It's packed full of traditions that have often been passed down from generation to generation, from the foods that are served up to the type of gifting that's done. 

Since living in Japan, we've had to create our own family traditions, since it's a) not always practical to fly home each year, and b) because we haven't been able to do that for the last couple of years anyway as a result of COVID-based restrictions.

I will admit that my first few Christmas seasons here felt weird, but I've grown to love our unique family traditions that have been created in Japan.

KFC every Christmas Eve

You're going to be hard-pressed to come across a traditional turkey Christmas dinner here, although some high-end hotels host buffet events at this time of year that come with turkey and all the trimmings. A DIY turkey dinner is also difficult for a number of reasons. Finding a turkey here isn't common, and even if you did, having the apparatus to cook it is the next challenge - we don't even have an oven. Instead, we've embraced the Japanese "KFC for Christmas Eve" tradition, and thoroughly enjoy it.

Colonel Sanders...or should we say Colonel Santa... Pic Credit: Mark/CC By NC-ND 2.0

Christmas cake instead of Christmas pudding

Back home in Australia we'd typically have Christmas pudding served with custard as our main dessert, despite it being the middle of summer for the festive season there. I love Christmas pudding, but it can be hard to track down here -- I've found it before at import stores like Kaldi Coffee Farm, but like most imported goodies it comes at a much higher price than what you'd expect back home.

Instead, these days we go down the Christmas cake route. The whipped cream and strawberry topped sponge cake is much more geared towards my children's palates anyway, and they're much easier to find. Almost every one of my local bakeries sells them around the festive season, plus you can even pre-order them at some convenience stores - my nearest Lawson is just one example.

A different focus on gifts

With limited space and the ever-present question of how long we'll be in Japan as a double-foreigner family, we don't tend to go all out with material gifts anymore. Instead, we tend to opt for consumable goodies, like food -- for instance, my husband loved the pork buns from Iwasaki Honpo in Nagasaki when we visited there a few years ago, and they ship their products nationwide. I usually buy him some of those, plus other practical bits and pieces. For our children, we do purchase a few toys they've had their eyes on, but we also like going for experience-based gifting. One of our go-to gifts is an annual pass for the Niigata Marinepia Aquarium, a place we regularly frequent.