Despite the oft-repeated myth, Coca-Cola didn’t invent the modern image of a jolly, red-and-white Santa Claus. A moot point now that the brand’s holiday campaigns have become inseparable from Western Christmas culture. But while Coke trucks rumble across TV screens every December overseas, Japan is the rare place where Coca-Cola never quite managed to claim December 25 as part of its corporate DNA.
Not that Japan is lacking in corporate Christmas traditions. The country famously embraced one, and it didn’t come from a soft drink. It came in a cardboard bucket.
Every December, millions of people in Japan sit down to a Christmas dinner of KFC. The demand is so intense that family sets must be pre-ordered weeks—sometimes months—in advance. In some prefectures, reservations open in late October. How did this happen? Is it because Colonel Sanders resembles a slightly off-brand Santa? Or because adding “grease” to his 11 herbs and spices gets you twelve, as in the Twelve Days of Christmas?
Tempting, but no.
The widely accepted explanation is far simpler: in 1974, KFC Japan launched a wildly successful ad campaign called “Kurisumasu ni wa Kentakkii!” (“Kentucky for Christmas!”). There was no deep cultural logic behind it; the slogan simply landed. Turkey wasn’t widely available, ovens weren’t common, and KFC offered a ready-made ‘Western-style’ holiday meal at a time when Christmas in Japan was evolving into a light-hearted, romantic, and secular celebration. The rest is marketing history.
It also helps that Christmas in Japan isn’t a public holiday and carries no religious weight for most people. For many secular individuals, it is closer to a winter Valentine’s Day: a date-night event for couples and a chance to splurge on cake and fried chicken. KFC leans into this heavily—adding Christmas cakes to their seasonal menu so that their stores become a one-stop shop for December 25.
As the tradition grew, convenience stores from Lawson to FamilyMart jumped into the market with their own “Christmas chicken” sets, hoping to nibble away at KFC’s seasonal monopoly. Whether they’ll ever catch up remains to be seen, but then again, the idea of an American fast food chain becoming synonymous with Christmas in Japan once seemed just as implausible.
Written in 2019 by Cezary Jan Strusiewicz, updated Dec 2025 for accuracy.