On Christmas Eve in Japan, families queue — sometimes for hours, often having ordered weeks ahead — for fried chicken. Christmas dinner is KFC, it has been for fifty years, and the story of why is one of the great marketing accidents.
An overheard remark, 1974
Japan has no Christmas dinner tradition of its own — the holiday arrived largely without the food attached. The origin story runs that a foreign customer in a Tokyo KFC remarked that since turkey was unavailable in Japan, fried chicken was the closest he could get to Christmas dinner. The sales team took the hint, and in 1974 launched a national campaign: “Kentucky for Christmas.” The first store had only opened in Nagoya in 1970 under manager Takeshi Okawara, later credited as the mind behind the party barrel.
Fifty years later
The campaign worked so well it stopped being a campaign and became the tradition itself. Christmas Eve is now KFC Japan’s busiest day of the year — around ten times a normal day’s trade — with Colonel Sanders statues across the country dressed in Santa outfits and party barrels reserved well in advance. An entire nation’s Christmas dinner, created by an overheard complaint and a good slogan.
Source: KFC Global and CNN
Every tradition was invented by someone
KFC Christmas is the cleanest possible proof of this site’s favourite theme: traditions do not descend from antiquity, they get invented — by a department store (Rudolph), by two women at a kitchen table (the Elf on the Shelf), by a Vancouver house party (the ugly jumper), or by a fried chicken chain with a good tagline. Fifty years is all it takes to become immemorial.
Dress for the bucket
Machine washable, which matters when dinner is fried. More in the Men’s collection.