Kentucky for Christmas

How a 1974 marketing campaign became a national ritual - and what the queues say about how Japan makes meaning

My first Christmas back in Japan, I stood in line for two hours outside a KFC in Umeda. It was cold. The queue wrapped around the block. Everyone was patient, almost reverent - families with small children, couples on dates, salarymen picking up orders for office parties.

I'd spent fifteen years in California, where Christmas meant something inherited - turkey, carols, traditions passed down whether or not anyone remembered why. Here was a tradition only fifty years old, built on a marketing campaign, and somehow more alive than anything I'd grown up with.

The Origin Story

In 1974, KFC Japan launched "Kurisumasu ni wa Kentakkii" - Kentucky for Christmas. The legend says Takeshi Okawara, the first KFC Japan manager, overheard foreigners in his store lamenting the lack of turkey. Fried chicken as substitute. Whether that's true or embellished, the slogan stuck.

Japan had no established Christmas food tradition. December 25th isn't a national holiday. Most families weren't roasting turkeys or hams - many apartments don't have ovens. KFC filled an empty space with aggressive marketing and a product that delivered exactly what it promised. Fifty years later, they sell an estimated 3.6 million party barrels every Christmas season^[1].

What interests me isn't that it worked. It's that it became real.

The Reservation System

You can't just walk into KFC on December 24th and expect to walk out with chicken. The queues stretch around blocks. Smart money books ahead.

Reservations open in early November. You pick your barrel size, select your sides, choose a pickup time, and pay a deposit. The popular slots - 5pm to 7pm on Christmas Eve - vanish fast. Some people order in October.

The party barrels come in sizes from small (serves 2-3) to premium (serves 6-8). Standard contents: original recipe chicken, coleslaw, and a cake for dessert. Premium versions add things like roast chicken legs and wine.

The December 24th Experience

If you didn't reserve, you wait. The queues can hit two hours at peak times. Staff hand out menus while you stand. The smell of fried chicken drifts from the kitchen. Everyone's patient - this is just what you do.

Inside, it's organised chaos. Reserved orders stacked behind the counter, each tagged with a name and pickup time. Walk-in customers eyeing the dwindling stock. Staff moving with the efficiency of people who've been drilling for this since November.

The chicken itself? It's KFC. Same as every other day, more or less. The magic isn't in the product - it's in the ritual.

Why It Matters

The easy explanation is that Japan loves an event. Limited-time offerings, seasonal specials, queuing for the latest thing - it's cultural reflex. KFC Christmas taps into all of it.

But I think there's something else. Japan is good at taking foreign things and making them Japanese. Christmas arrived without context - no church, no centuries of tradition, no inherited expectations. So the country built its own version from scratch. Fried chicken. Strawberry cake. Illuminations. Dates with your partner. A secular holiday about consumption and togetherness, stripped of any obligation to mean something it doesn't.

There's freedom in that. My American Christmases always carried weight - family tensions, religious expectations, the pressure of traditions nobody questioned. The Japanese version asks nothing of you except to show up, eat chicken, look at lights.

Maybe that's shallow. Or maybe it's honest about what holidays actually are - excuses to gather, to mark time, to do something together. The origin doesn't matter. The ritual does.

Beyond the Bucket

KFC dominates, but competitors have muscled in. MOS Burger offers fried chicken sets. Convenience stores stock their own Christmas chicken. Supermarkets run holiday specials. The tradition has outgrown its origin.

The cake tradition runs parallel. Japanese Christmas cakes are strawberry shortcake - light sponge, whipped cream, fresh strawberries arranged just so. Every bakery and convenience store sells them. Like the chicken, you order ahead or risk disappointment.

I still queue sometimes. Not for the chicken - I can get that any day. For the experience of standing in the cold with strangers, all of us participating in something we chose rather than inherited. There's a particular kind of belonging in that. A tradition that asks to be opted into rather than assumed.

My grandmother would find it baffling. But she'd understand the part about family gathering to eat together. That part is old. Only the chicken is new.