Name: The Bizarre Japanese Tradition of KFC for Christmas
Uploaded: 2025-12-22T02:04:43.000Z
Duration: 3 min 11 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Some of us have the usual turkey and ham for Christmas dinner, mashed potatoes, stuffing, maybe that weird canned jelly cranberry sauce stuff.

Adverbs of manner

But what if I told you there's a huge tradition overseas that you've probably never heard of?

Instead of homemade meals for the holidays, Japanese families will often pick up a party bucket of good old fashioned KFC for a crispy greasy holiday treat.

And you might be wondering a couple things right now, like how did this tradition begin?

Let's dig into this quirky holiday tradition and trace back to where it all began.

Three minute flicks entertaining, educating and enlightening.

Post World War II, as Japan's economy was not only settling back into pre war condition, it started booming.

The average household was finally finding themselves in a position where they could indulge in consumer culture for pretty much the very first time.

And with the United States being considered a cultural powerhouse, the interest of all things Western foods, fashion, entertainment and vacations were becoming the most exciting new way to spend all of this newfound cash.

Those living in Tokyo and other major Japanese cities would start to see American businesses popping up rapidly throughout the 1970s, where during this decade, Japan's fast food industry exploded by 600%.

During this rapid expansion, KFC would open its first store in 1970 and by 1981 the chain would have over 320 stores making a combined 200 million USD dollars every year.

Christmas in Japan is largely secular, with less than 1% of the country identifying as Christian and families not having much for strict traditions and how they're supposed to celebrate the holiday.

Somehow this made for the perfect operation for rapid KFC infiltration.

In 1974, KFC launched the Kentucky for Christmas marketing campaign alongside the holiday themed party buckets.

The origin for the Christmas craze is a little murky, but

has been attributed to a number of potential factors.

For starters, Takeshi Okawara, manager of the first Japanese KFC and soon after, the KFC Japan CEO came to a company Christmas party dressed up as Santa, granting the idea to have Santa Colonel Sanders hybrids as decor during the holidays, show up in commercials, and

even deliver the buckets on Christmas Eve.

Alongside this, the Kentucky for Christmas campaign had a massive marketing push.

Advertisements would show happy families enjoying the feast of a golden fried chicken party bucket alongside the song My Old Kentucky Home.

KFC also had the benefit of being a familiar flavor profile as many Japanese dishes would consist of sliced meat covered in panko bread crumbs and fried.

This made KFC the perfect blend of foreign and familiar, an exciting, delicious holiday feast that wasn't too exotic for the whole family to partake in.

Over 50 years later, the tradition still goes incredibly strong to this very day, with families reserving their buckets from anywhere for days or weeks in advance to ensure they're able to bring home kfc.

Despite the incredible demand those who go in unprepared can expect waiting in line on Christmas Eve for hours for a single bucket of chicken, or even being met with a sold out sign.

It seems safe to say that this unexpected Christmas tradition isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Three Minute Flicks don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell.