In Iceland, it takes place at six o'clock on Christmas Eve – the dish served is usually Hamborgarhryggur, a kind of gammon steak, though sometimes reindeer. In the Philippines, as in many Latin American cultures, you eat a hamón near midnight, a celebration of Noche Buena. And in the UK, after confiscating the eggnog from grandma and untangling the sprogs from the Christmas lights, you’ll probably devour a bird with trimmings at lunch time, though supermarkets anticipate their highest ever demand for vegan festive food.
There are no rules for Christmas dinner; only debates over origins, superiority and whether this will be the year you ban your loud uncle Rufus. But there is one tradition that makes a strong case for being the strangest.
Each Christmas Day, the Japanese get KFC.
To understand why, we must travel back in time to December 1974, when KFC Japan, a company run by the American parent and the Japanese Mitsubishi Corporation, had been serving the land of the rising sun for just four years.
According to KFC legend, it was on this date that the first manager of KFC, Takeshi Okawara, overheard foreigners in his store commiserating over the country’s lack of Christmas dinner. Later, in a dream, Okawara beheld a “party barrel” – a fried chicken experience to replace these sad expats’ turkey, all at a low low all-inclusive price. (This scheme did well for Okawara. He became president and CEO of Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan from 1984 to 2002.)
“KFC came to Japan in 1970, and held the first Christmas campaign in 1974, selling the combination of KFC’s original recipe chicken and a bottle of wine,” says Yuko Nakajima, chief marketing officer of KFC Japan. “Fried chicken and wine became a hit right away and a new Christmas custom for the Japanese market was introduced. This quickly evolved into a tradition for the market, ‘Fried Chicken for Christmas’.” Each year, it’s estimated that 3.6 million Japanese people fill their stomachs with the Colonel’s secret blend of herbs and spices.
The logistics of such an enterprise are not straightforward. “KFC Japan prepares for the Christmas season all year – the team has already started talking about Christmas 2020 – but preparation for supporting the current year really starts to pick up around July,” says Nakajima.
Between December 23 and 25 is when KFC Japan has its highest sales of the year. All in all, the company sells approximately 300,000 party barrels and 800,000 Christmas packs during this peak season, which accounts for about a third of the chain’s yearly sales in Japan.
And it’s not as simple as just turning up on Christmas Day and claiming your chicken dinner, explains Nakajima. Every year, there are lines out the door, starting on December 23, and Christmas Eve is the most popular date – about ten times busier than normal.
A few factors help with the logistics. 40 per cent of the orders are made in advance and start arriving about six weeks before Christmas (This year it all kicked off on November 1).
And just as in Okawara’s dream, KFC creates “Christmas packs” and larger “party barrels” in an attempt to anticipate product demand. As shown on the dedicated Japan KFC Christmas website, these are customisable, and range in price from about ¥2,000 to ¥8,000 (£14 to £56). Here, you can watch a young lady unbox four chicken tenders, two BBQ chicken legs, ten nuggets, three tubs of coleslaw, and an entire roast chicken (and eat the entire lot).
The campaign’s continued success derives from a fiendishly effective marketing campaign filling a gap in tradition.
Japan, being mostly Shinto or Buddihst, has no Christmas tradition – only around one per cent of the population is Christian. Christmas isn’t even an official holiday. So KFC made Christmas buckets a new tradition. According to the Financial Times, other brands – like Mos Burger – have tried and failed to challenge KFC’s dominance.
“For the past 20 years, KFC Japan has used the same jingle song in its Christmas TV ad,” says Nakajima. “When people hear the ad, they know it's time for the Christmas season and most Japanese can sing the jingle song. Because of the KFC tradition, almost every store in Japan now sells chicken on Christmas.” This ad, which promises “three portions for growing boys at just 1,500 yen”, flowered into an entire marketing campaign – every year across the land, Colonel Sanders – possessor of a jovially round belly, distinctive white facial hair and a legacy of mass bird slaughter – get dressed up in Santa outfits.
You may find the idea of eating KFC on Christmas Day amusing, just as the Japanese might find it amusing that we decorate a tree, a tradition popularised by an 1848 postcard of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; pull a cracker, a marketing invention by a British confectioner in the same year; or think Christmas a big deal at all, a notion spread by Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
But while the Japanese choose to associate the day with the archetypal company of the aptly named standard American diet (processed meat, pre-packaged foods, butter, fried foods, high-sugar drinks), we British, at least, cannot claim that we don’t eat KFC on Christmas. Over the last three years, we’ve purchased over 465,000 tubs of KFC's infamous gravy on Christmas Eve.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
