The Japanese have a particularly engaging ritual at this time of year: Kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii, which may sound like great wisdom but in fact refers to “Kentucky for Christmas”, the national habit of eating Kentucky Fried Chicken as their Christmas feast.
It began as an inspired bit of marketing. In the 1970s, KFC noticed that western expatriates in Japan were turning to fried chicken because they couldn’t get hold of turkey. Now it has become a ritual with enough selling power that there are queues around the block, and customers will order their chicken in November or even October. What’s particularly impressive is that Christmas isn’t even a holiday in Japan.
Kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii is an audacious piece of commercialisation, but it’s not the first time Christmas has been boldly hijacked to sell something; indeed, Christmas itself piggybacked on earlier midwinter festivals. Many Christmas traditions are fairly recent — in the UK, Christmas cards, turkey, crackers and trees are all 19th-century innovations. On the other hand, Christmas consumerism, which we tend to think of as a modern vice, is also a 19th-century habit. Joel Waldfogel’s book Scroogenomics shows that the boom in December spending can be traced back many decades. (In 1867 in New York, Macy’s decided it was worth keeping its doors open until midnight on Christmas Eve.)
So I don’t begrudge the Japanese their southern-fried Christmas ritual. In fact, I have been intrigued by Christmas rituals in general; some are good and some less so. As I pointed out last week (and last year), the ritual of giving gifts at Christmas is extremely wasteful, channelling valuable resources into ill-fitting clothes and tacky golf memorabilia that nobody would choose if they were buying for themselves.
Over the past decade or so, we’ve seen a new combination of two older traditions: giving gifts, and donating to charity. With much the same cheek as Kentucky Fried Chicken in Japan, Oxfam has been pushing the idea that you can “give twice” by donating to Oxfam on someone else’s behalf. In effect, you’re “giving” a dozen chicks, or a vegetable garden, or, notoriously, a goat. “A unique, symbolic gift,” says Oxfam, although a moment’s reflection will reveal it not to be unique at all.
And what does it symbolise? For some, it represents wit, anti-consumerism and the true spirit of Christmas. For others, it represents smug self-obsession. After all, if I give you an Oxfam goat, what have I really done? I’ve made a donation to charity, marinated in my own sense of superiority, and then mailed you the receipt. To add injury to this insult, I’ve also not bothered to buy you a gift. We can only hope that Oxfam, at least, is able to find someone who actually needs the goat.
Three researchers, Lisa Cavanaugh, Francesca Gino and Gavan Fitzsimons, recently published research into this sort of “socially responsible” gift. They found evidence that people systematically overestimate how welcome such gifts will be, particularly when they are given to people they don’t know terribly well. As I described last week, Gino has contributed to other research on gift-giving, discovering that recipients are often happier with gifts chosen from a wishlist or otherwise explicitly requested, even though that does seem to lose some of the charm. Combining the two insights suggests that if you want to make a donation to charity on someone’s behalf, it might be wise to ask for their blessing first.
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What of the Christmas rituals we share as a group? Different families will have their own rituals — perhaps the gifts are to be opened at a particular time or in a particular order. Perhaps the Queen’s Speech must be watched, respectfully. My wife’s family, religiously minded, would delay opening gifts until after a Christmas Day service. My own family were more secular but fond of delayed gratification — many gifts had to wait until after Christmas lunch. For some families, there’s a particular film to be watched; for others, a board game to be played.
Ovul Sezer, Michael Norton, Francesca Gino (again) and Kathleen Vohs have been examining the effect of rituals on the way we experience Christmas and New Year’s Eve. The researchers find a correlation between these rituals — sacred or secular — and various positive experiences of the holiday season, including feeling more curious, paying closer attention, liking the family more, enjoying the seasonal holiday, and life satisfaction in general. Of course, causation may run the other way — it may be that disliking your family causes you to avoid sharing Christmas rituals with them rather than the other way round.
Still, Sezer and her colleagues seem to be on to something. Life is full of social rituals but their details often do not seem to matter much: the wake, the prom night, the baby shower, even Kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii — we form our social habits and we stick to them. And the research suggests we’re absolutely right to do so. The rituals seem to make our lives richer and more enjoyable.
And without going into too much detail, there is one Christmas tradition that’s unlikely to disappear any time soon: the number of children conceived peaks over the Christmas holidays, leading to a bump in birth rates in September. That’s certainly one way to bring a family closer together.
Written for and first published in the Financial Times.
My new book “Messy” is now out and available online in the US and UK or in good bookshops everywhere.