How is Christmas celebrated in Japan?

In Japan, Christmas is not a national holiday, and most people who keep it are not Christian. For them it is a warm, cheerful home festival, and the big evening is Christmas Eve, when people of every faith and none have a party. New Year, a week later, is the great traditional holiday of the season.

At a glance

• December 25: not a national holiday
• The big evening: Christmas Eve, a party for people of every faith and none
• On the table: a sponge cake with cream and strawberries
• Christians: fewer than two in a hundred
• The season’s great holiday: New Year, Shōgatsu

Christmas words

Japan’s word for Christmas, kurisumasu, came from English in the early Meiji years, around the 1870s. Before that, Japan’s Christians had used the Portuguese word for it: Natal.

A home festival

Only a small share of people in Japan are Christian: at the end of 2024, churches counted fewer than two million members in a country of about 123 million. Most people in Japan who keep Christmas are not Christian. For them it is a warm, cheerful home festival: a cake on the table and presents to give. In the 1950s it was celebrated loudly in bars and clubs, then it settled down into a family evening.

Christmas Day is not a national holiday in Japan. The Emperor’s Birthday holiday is now in February, so Japan has no national holiday in December.

The Christmas cake

The Christmas cake in Japan is usually a light sponge cake under white cream, crowned with red strawberries and often a little sugar Santa. Fujiya, a Western-style sweet shop in Yokohama, says it first sold a Christmas cake in December 1910, the month after it opened.

KFC Japan’s first restaurant opened in Nagoya in 1970, and the company ran its first Christmas campaign in 1974.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is also a night for couples, and the dream date is dinner somewhere with a view of the lights. One writer found that the idea caught on in the 1980s: a magazine for young women declared it in 1983, and magazines for young men followed a few years later.

The Japanese word was already in a Japanese book by 1909, a translated story told as a mischievous boy’s diary.

Winter lights

In winter, Japan’s streets glow. Avenues of trees are wrapped in lights; Sendai’s zelkova trees on Jōzenji Street are famous for it, and Sapporo’s White Illumination began in 1981 with about a thousand bulbs in Ōdōri Park.

The first Christmas in Japan

Christianity first came to Japan in 1549, when the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier stepped ashore at Kagoshima with his companion Cosme de Torres. Xavier left Japan in 1551, and Torres stayed on to lead the small Christian community. On Christmas Eve 1552, in the city of Yamaguchi, Torres and his fellow missionaries invited Japanese Christians to celebrate Christmas with them. It is remembered as the first Christmas in Japan, the first kept with Japanese believers.

Christmas came into Japanese homes in the Meiji era, from the late 1800s. The first Christmas party held by Japanese people themselves is said to have been at a girls’ school in Tokyo’s Ginza around 1875. By the 1880s a shop called Maruzen was bringing in Christmas goods from abroad, and by the 1910s and 1920s more and more families kept the day.

The year’s end: the Ninth and New Year

As the year ends, orchestras and choirs all over Japan perform Beethoven’s Ninth, the Daiku, a year-end custom on a scale unmatched in Europe or America.

New Year, Shōgatsu, not Christmas, is the great traditional holiday of the season. Homes welcome the god of the new year, people visit a shrine or temple in the first days of January, and families sit down to zōni soup and osechi, the special New Year dishes.

Quick answers

Is Christmas a holiday in Japan?

No. December 25 is not a national holiday in Japan.

How do people in Japan celebrate Christmas?

A happy evening at home, most of all on Christmas Eve: cake, presents and parties, for people of every faith and none.

What is a Japanese Christmas cake?

Usually a light sponge cake with white cream and strawberries, often with a little sugar Santa on top.

How do you say Merry Christmas in Japanese?

メリークリスマス, Merī Kurisumasu, said meh-ree koo-ree-soo-mah-soo, borrowed from the English.

Read on: who brings the presents around the world, why so many countries celebrate on Christmas Eve, Christmas fried chicken in Japan, where Christmas is not a holiday and Japanese Christmas words.

Where our facts come from

1. Cabinet Office of Japan, 「国民の祝日」について (on the national holidays), The list of national holidays under the Act on National Holidays (Act No. 178 of 1948), Article 2: none in December; 元日 (January 1); 天皇誕生日 (the Emperor's Birthday) on February 23
2. Agency for Cultural Affairs (文化庁), 「令和７年の宗教統計調査の結果を公表します」 (Shūkyō Nenkan summary, December 2025); Statistics Bureau of Japan, 人口推計 (September 24, 2026), Agency summary, section （信者数）, as of December 31, 2024: 「キリスト教系は 1,872,320 人」, with the note that each religious body counts its members in its own way; Statistics Bureau, ≪ポイント≫ (total population 122,838,000, April 1, 2026)
3. 日本大百科全書 (Nipponica, Shogakukan), 「クリスマス」, via Kotobank, The paragraph beginning 「日本において、クリスマスが日本人によって初めて祝われたのは」 (spreading to non-Christian homes; in the 1950s loud in bars and cabarets, then settling into eating cake and exchanging presents at home); subsection 「クリスマス料理」, last sentences (「日本では宗教に関係なくクリスマス・イブにパーティーをする習慣が広まっている」)
4. 改訂新版 世界大百科事典 (Heibonsha), 「クリスマス」, section 日本, via Kotobank, Section 日本, first sentences (the custom spreads after the Meiji era; the first celebration by Japanese people, apart from churches and foreign residents, 「1875年ころ，原胤昭が設立した銀座の原女学校においてであったといわれる」); 「明治10年代には丸善がクリスマス用品を輸入し，このころから大正期にかけて，クリスマスはしだいに一般家庭でも祝われるようになった」
5. 精選版 日本国語大辞典 (Shogakukan), 「クリスマス」 (語誌), 「ナタル」 and 「サンタクロース」, via Kotobank, 「クリスマス」, 語誌 (1) (「英米語の『クリスマス』は明治初年からで、それまではポルトガル外来語の『ナタル』であった」); 「サンタクロース」, the definition (the white-bearded old man in red said to go round giving children presents on the night before Christmas; also サンタ) and the first example, いたづら小僧日記 (1909), translated by Sasaki Kuni; 「ナタル」 (「キリシタン用語。キリストの降誕祭。クリスマス」; first example どちりなきりしたん, 1600)
6. Nipponica, 「ザビエル」 and 「トルレス」, via Kotobank; Yamaguchi Prefectural Tourism Federation, 「サビエル公園」, ザビエル (「1549年（天文18）8月15日にザビエルは鹿児島に第一歩を印した」; preaching in Yamaguchi under Ōuchi Yoshitaka; 「1551年ひとまず離日」); トルレス (landed with Xavier, 1549; head of the mission after Xavier left); the tourism page's description paragraph (Torres, the church in Yamaguchi, and on 1552, old calendar 12th month 9th day, Western December 24, a Christmas celebration with Japanese believers, 「日本初のクリスマスと言われています」)
7. 『和・洋・中・エスニック 世界の料理がわかる辞典』 (Kodansha), 「クリスマスケーキ」, via Kotobank, The entry (「日本では一般に スポンジケーキ に ホイップクリーム や バタークリーム を塗り、砂糖細工の サンタクロース ・いちご・チョコレートなどを飾りつけたものをさすことが多い」)
8. Fujiya Co., Ltd., 「不二家の歴史」, Timeline, 1910 (明治43年): 「11月 藤井林右衛門（25歳）が横浜市元町2丁目86番地に洋菓子店（元町店）を開店」; 「12月 クリスマスケーキ発売」
9. Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan, company history (沿革), the 1970 entries (July: the company founded; November: its store No. 1, in Nagoya); the 1974 entry (「初のクリスマスキャンペーン実施」)
10. 堀井憲一郎 (Horii Ken'ichirō), 「なぜ、そしていつ、クリスマスは恋人たちのものになったのか？」, 現代新書 (Kodansha), November 20, 2017, The opening line (a couple's dinner on Christmas Eve at a restaurant with a night view); the paragraphs after the opening (prepared in the 1970s, carried out in the 1980s, settled in the 1990s); section 「1983年のクリスマス宣言」 (an·an, December 23, 1983 issue; not all young people did so in 1983); section 「男性誌は4年遅れた」 (young men's magazines from 1987)
11. Nipponica, 「イルミネーション」, via Kotobank; Sapporo White Illumination Executive Committee, 「さっぽろホワイトイルミネーション」, Nipponica, the paragraph on commercial uses (winter street trees and Christmas trees decorated with illumination; 「仙台市定禅寺通りのケヤキ並木のイルミネーション」 famous); Sapporo, 「さっぽろ ホワイトイルミネーションとは？」 (「1981年に大通公園（大通西2丁目）広場で約1千個の電球で始まった」)
12. 改訂新版 世界大百科事典 (Heibonsha), 「ベートーベン」, section 日本人とベートーベン, via Kotobank; デジタル大辞泉, 「第九」, 「日本人とベートーベン」, first paragraph (「近年は《第9交響曲》を年末に演奏するという習慣が，欧米には類をみないほどに，全国的に広がった」); 大辞泉 「第九」 (the common name of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony)
13. 百科事典マイペディア (Heibonsha), 「正月」, via Kotobank, 「日本の正月は年神を迎え豊作を祈る年初儀礼で，盆とともに祖霊をまつる二大年中行事である」; 「初詣に行く」; 「雑煮，お節料理などの正月料理を食べて祝う」

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