Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyororin
Back to the topic (sort of) though - how long has Christmas been a fairly well known thing?
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I had to do some research to answer because Christmas was already pretty much the way it is now in Japan when I was a kid in the 60's.
In the 16th century, the first recorded Mass was held. There must not have been anything commercial about Christmas back then. Still it involved less than 1% of the Japanese population that were Christian.
As you know Christianity was banned during the Edo period. It wasn't before 1900 when the general public came to know about Christmas. Meidi-ya started selling Christmas cakes in Tokyo in 1900 and from that moment on, we got hooked on the new "custom", as commercial and invented as they were. In 1925, the government issued the Christmas postage stamps and donated part of their sales to charity. People started holding parties where they drank champaign, ate cakes, exchanged presents, etc.
So, apart from Christmas celebrated by real Christians in Japan, which seems to have a 500-year history, the history of Christmas celebrated in highly commecial ways by the general public looks to have a roughly 100-year history.
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