Christmas Dinner
The modern Japanese tradition of eating fried chicken on Christmas Eve began (so the story goes) when a visiting American came to a KFC and said, “I couldn’t find a turkey here in Japan, so I am having chicken instead for Christmas.” A couple years later, in 1974, KFC launched an ad campaign promoting “KFC for Christmas.” It was a big hit, and to this day many Japanese still follow this tradition and eat chicken from KFC on Christmas Eve.
