I write this article two weeks into Advent. British high streets are colorful with Christmas lights and tuneful with carol singers; shops are busy with people buying presents, decorations, food and wine. Japanese families will already be preparing for New Year's. But many will also celebrate Christmas, though it is a festival with no native relevance, and though barely 1 percent of the population is Christian.

In Japan, Christmas is a secular event. Oshogatsu, by contrast, still has a religious meaning for most Japanese: people visit shrines to welcome in the new year, just as secular families in Europe may feel duty bound to attend church on Christmas Day. For the Japanese, Christmas has no such connotation. It has become a festival for couples. Like Valentine's Day, it is a time for lovers to share a romantic dinner -- usually on the eve, rather than the day, and usually in the evening, since Dec. 24, unlike the Emperor's birthday the day before, is not a holiday.

Westerners often bemoan this appropriation of a festival which, for them, has sacred significance. Still, such appropriation is a very common Japanese practice. Japan has always borrowed things from elsewhere -- Buddhism from China, capitalism from the United States -- and reshaped them for its own convenience.

In any case, the origins of Christmas itself are little different. The Christian celebration replaced pagan winter festivals. The date of Jesus' birth is not specified in the Gospels. But the biblical symbolism of light in darkness made it fitting to celebrate it during midwinter, as the days begin to lengthen. Thus, ancient winter festivals were adapted for the new religion.

Traces of pagan influence persist in long-established customs, traditions and taboos. Many natives of Northern European countries are disgusted by the notion of eating horse meat, a popular dish in Japan, particularly in Matsumoto and Kumamoto. Horse is widely eaten, in fact, elsewhere in Europe: France and Spain, especially. But it is taboo in Northern Europe because in pagan times the Saxons and Scandinavians consumed horse flesh at their midwinter festivals. When evangelists Christianized these regions, replacing pagan celebrations with Christmas, they persuaded the local population to renounce horse meat.

More often, however, pagan traditions have not been abolished, but absorbed. The mistletoe which decorates English homes at Christmas was originally associated with the druids' celebrations of the winter solstice. Gifts were exchanged by the Romans at their wintertime Saturnalia festival. The evergreen trees now used as Christmas trees were once sacred to the Norse god Baldur.

Within the Christian world, too, traditions have changed with time. The Christmas tree is not only of pagan origin; for Britons, at least, it is a relative novelty. This continental European custom was popularized only about 150 years ago, by Prince Albert, the German husband of Queen Victoria. Most British families now eat turkey on Christmas Day, but the traditional festive meal is goose. Turkey was introduced from the Americas in the 16th century but did not become the standard Christmas dish until well into the 20th, when the bird proved particularly amenable to new intensive farming techniques.

The couples dining in restaurants in Japan on Christmas Eve will eat chicken -- a bird more suitable in size for two. This is a newer tradition than even turkey in Britain. They will probably dine without thinking of the Baby Jesus, and exchange presents with no awareness of the Magi. But they will celebrate something that has meaning for them: their affection for one another.

In that, they are like many in today's secular Europe. At Christmas I think more of my own family than of the Holy Family. But I think, too, that I am participating in a tradition, which, like all living traditions, is a blend of the old and the new. That is why I feel inclined not to bemoan but to celebrate the new meanings the Japanese have given to their Christmas.

The Japan Times Weekly: Dec. 23, 2006
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