Finshots Holiday Special: Kentucky Kurisimasu in… Japan
Hey folks! Hope you all had a lovely Christmas yesterday. The holiday season is in full swing, and we’re sure you’re feeling it too.
As we mentioned earlier, we’re taking a year end break this week to step away from our usual writing spree and use the time to figure out how we can make Finshots even better in 2026.
And for that, we need your help.
We’ve put together a short Finshots Readers’ Survey to understand what you enjoy about our stories and where you think we can improve. So before you dive into today’s story, please take a moment to fill it out.
But as promised, we haven’t left you hanging. Every day, we’ll bring you a recap of some of the best stories we wrote this year. And once that’s done, we’ll roll into a Holiday Special series with one special edition each day on some of the weirdest and most unique Christmas traditions from around the world.
Let’s kick start today’s edition by revisiting five of our most interesting capital markets stories from the year…
Do we need 24 hour stock markets?: An explainer on whether stock markets can run efficiently 24 hours a day.
The US wants its stock market to crash: An explainer on why the Trump administration might be intentionally driving down the US stock market.
Is SEBI coming for Wall Street’s smartest trader?: An explainer about how Jane Street's billion-dollar strategies may be quietly moving India's biggest stock indices.
The BSE blip SEBI couldn’t ignore: A story about why SEBI fined BSE and what that tells us about how information moves money in markets.
Titan’s American dream: An explainer on why Titan wants to expand to the US.
And since picking just five felt too tough, here’s a bonus list:
FIIs are upset. Should you be too?: An explainer on why FIIs are exiting Indian markets and whether it should concern you.
Why Warren Buffett isn't a fan of gold: An explainer on why Warren Buffett dislikes gold.
What’s driving the Prime Focus re-run?: A story about Prime Focus, the Indian company behind Hollywood VFX blockbusters, and why its stock is in the spotlight.
Today’s Finshots Holiday Special: Kentucky Kurisimasu in… Japan
And to kick off our Holiday Special series, we’re taking you to Japan 🏯
Holidays are more than just feasts and family gatherings. At their core, they’re about traditions — rituals repeated year after year that make a place feel uniquely itself. Some of these are deeply geographical. Spain has La Tomatina. Munich has Oktoberfest. And unless you’re local, you’re usually just watching from the sidelines.
But Christmas is different. It feels universal.
Which makes what Japan did with it all the more fascinating.
In Japan, Christmas doesn’t smell like pine trees, plum cake and wine.
It smells… like fried chicken.
Yup! And not just any fried chicken, but KFC, the American fast-food giant. But wait. How does fried chicken, that too an American one, turn into a Japanese Christmas tradition?
At first glance, they look worlds apart. But this isn’t a new tradition at all. In fact, it started in 1970, the year when Japan got its first ever KFC outlet. Takeshi Okawara was the manager of the branch, and the idea came to him in a midnight dream: to sell party barrels at Christmas.
A party barrel is a large box of food designed for a group of people sharing a meal together. Takeshi thought of it when he overheard some foreigners talking about how they missed eating turkey for Christmas. The closest alternative at the time would be KFC, and he marketed the Party Barrel as one way to celebrate the holiday.
And boy oh boy did it work! Just 4 years later, in 1974, KFC took the marketing plan national, all over Japan. They called it Kurisimasu ni wa Kentakki (which means Kentucky for Christmas).
The campaign took off and Takeshi Okawara rose through the ranks of the company, eventually becoming the president and CEO of KFC Japan from 1984 to 2002.
After the Kentucky for Christmas campaign went national something remarkable happened. People actually started to embrace fried chicken for Christmas dinner. What began as just a marketing campaign turned into a full-fledged tradition.
Around 3.5 million people celebrate their Christmas at KFC in Japan, and that’s despite the Christian population being just 1% of the total population and Christmas not even being an official holiday there.
By late November and early December, people pre-order their Christmas Party Barrels months in advance just to avoid the huge queues that form outside stores — especially on Christmas Eve, which is the busiest day of the year, sometimes seeing ten times the usual foot traffic.
Also, it’s not just about the chicken anymore. Today’s Christmas meals can include special Christmas Packs with sides, desserts like cake, and festive packaging — all designed to make the meal feel like a proper holiday feast rather than a fast-food snack. The frenzy resembles India’s firecracker rush just before Diwali — predictable, unavoidable, and intense. Miss the window, and you’re either stuck waiting.
Part of why this tradition stuck is cultural: Japan didn’t have a long-established Christmas dinner of its own, nor a tradition like roast turkey. So KFC filled a cultural gap at exactly the right moment. Clever marketing, the novelty of Western-style celebrations, and the idea of gathering around a convenient, shareable meal helped it click in a way no one expected.
So while the rest of the world might be roasting turkeys or ham, in Japan, you might hear the secret herbs and spices of Colonel Sanders echoing through homes on Christmas Eve!
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