Christmas is coming, and the KFC chicken nuggets are getting fat, because they don`t eat turkey in Japan and my 25 year old Japanese friend has never seen a whole dead chicken before because they don`t sell them here.
For a country with no Christian background and only 0.5% Christian population, Japan certainly enjoys Christmas. While many Japanese people may not know what it is, or why they`re celebrating, or who Christ is or what he apparently did, they still enjoy a nice tree and some decorations and a few good presents. And why not? A lot of England is no longer practicing Christianity either, and yet we`re all still happy to claim a festival that gives us something to do in the darkest, coldest months of the year. Probably because it was a pagan festival long before it was ever Christmas, and Pope Julius I allocated Christ`s birthday to the date it currently is simply so that the transition would be easier for pagan Romans, who still wanted to eat and party at the end of December even if they were being forced to worship something else. Because, let`s face it: otherwise December would be absolutely sodding unbearable.
Jesus, for the record - according to the Bible - was born in September. You think any wise men would have been in a field watching sheep in the middle of winter?
Thus because they therefore have as much right to it as we do, Christmas in Japan is well underway. Lights are up as only the Japanese can do it: covering every inch of space, in Hello Kitty shapes and Donald Duck shapes and AnPanMan shapes and - surreally - a five foot glow in the dark giraffe. Western Christmas music is playing in every convenience store, every supermarket, every restaurant. Violin versions of Jingle Bells are filtering gently through the local onsen (replacing violin versions of The Carpenters, which is nice, because one should not ever have to listen to Close to you while naked and surrounded by naked old ladies). And all of the merchandise in the shops is Christmas themed. And I mean all of it. In a country where everything is seasonal, and the changeover is so fast that you can`t afford to get attached to anything, every product currently embraces the Christmas spirit. Coffee has little wreaths on the wrapping; chocolate has holly all over it (in more than one way); icecream is decorated with snowflakes. For a month or two every year, you can`t eat or drink anything without knowing that Christmas is just around the corner (and then, on Christmas day, KFC has lines outside it, because it`s chicken and The Colonal has a white beard and a red outfit and looks a bit like the pervy younger brother of Santa).
Japanese children love Christmas, obviously, but they always seem a little wistful, because it`s not a family holiday here: it`s a couple`s holiday. Cards have couples kissing on them; Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse rub noses in public as often as possible, wearing red and white costumes (despite living in different houses, as I discovered at Tokyo Disneyland last Christmas, so it`s clearly all for show, or maybe they`re just like my parents). Loved up couples walk hand in hand down fairy-lit paths that have been fairy-lit especially for loved up couples to walk down, and restaurants are full of tables for two. So, while the children are obviously extremely keen on all the lights and presents, they don`t really get to be as much a part of the celebrations as they do in the West.
Unless they`re my children, that is. I went out last night and bought a little Christmas tree, and as much tinsel and glitter and holly as I could find and decorated my classroom. I bought sweets and filled a sack with them, and sprayed fake snow all over the windows. I put a Christmas cd on, and filled the air with the smell of... well, whatever the Christmas candle smells of. And every single child that walks past makes "oooh" and "aaaah" sounds, and presses their little face up against the window like a tiny oriental Oliver Twist. Which means that I`m going to keep decorating until it`s a grotto, because I want to give all of my kids a little, tiny feeling of the way I used to feel at Christmas time and still feel: a little bit sick with happiness and magic and excitement.
Harai is providing the necessary male reluctance and confusion by sitting in the corner and taking 25 minutes to string one bauble, before announcing that he`s tired and it`s difficult and then lying down on the floor.
For me, the trappings of Christmas still work. I don`t know if this is normal for an adult, but my heart still flips when I see a Christmas tree. When I hear Christmas songs, I`m immediately happy. Christmas lights get me excited (all year round, actually). It`s like in Brave New World where the babies are trained to respond to stimuli: just one fairy light, just one line of We Wish You A Merry Christmas, just one snowflake, and I`m filled with cosy wellbeing and a desire to tell people I love them and eat chocolate. Even more so than normal.
What is strange, though, is that with age I`ve discovered that Christmas no longer needs to be so literal. The excitement and happiness stored up from all the years of beautiful Christmases as a child (nobody can decorate a room like my mum) only need the slightest catalyst to be released. Cold air and wood smoke, for instance. I drive through it every morning, and every single morning it feels like Christmas. Oranges: I drive past an orange tree orchard twice a day, and twice a day I`m back in my bed, waiting for Santa (apprehensively: I didn`t like Santa. He scared me). Never mind the Christmas lights: if I`m driving late at night, all I have to do is lower my eyelashes and the white and red and green road lights all blur and look like decorations. And I don`t need a cd player: I can hum a Christmas song whenever I like, and I do. I`m making Harai extremely uncomfortable.
It doesn`t matter, really, whether Christmas means the birth of Christ, or whether it means presents, or whether it means lights and nice food. It doesn`t matter whether it`s family, or couples, or children, or adults. It doesn`t matter whether it`s a big turkey or a bucket of KFC nuggets. It just matters that at the darkest, coldest time of the year, we all find a way to make ourselves a little bit happier.
And, if possible, to make others a little happier too.
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HOLLY MIRANDA SMALE
Writer, photographer, "rapper" and general technophobe takes on the internet in what could be a very, very messy fight. But it's alright: she's harder than she looks, and she's wearing every single ring she could get her hands on.
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