It's the end of the first week of December, which means the odd annual festival of Christmas in Japan is once again in full swing. In fact, it's inescapable: bells ringing, carols tinkling, lights twinkling, shoppers jostling, cakes a-baking everywhere you look.
Ubiquity is not what makes it odd, though. The same commerce-driven Christmas tsunami is swamping many other countries, too, as happens every year. The difference is that here, where it is largely bereft of religious significance, the Christmas season is like a holly-wreathed Potemkin village: all facade and nothing behind it, except for a peek preview of Valentine's Day. The oddity, especially to those used to a more religious observance, is that it remains so heartwarming. As Charles Dickens taught us long ago, it's hard to stay sour in the face of good cheer -- even, apparently, tasteless, manipulative or borrowed good cheer.
Logically speaking, it may seem rather silly for a populace to embrace, or at least tolerate, a festival rooted in a religion to which less than 1 percent of it subscribes. That is why foreign visitors' conventional response to Christmas in Japan mostly appears to veer between bemusement and disapproval. Many think it is weird for the season to peak on Christmas Eve, leaving Christmas Day itself -- supposedly the festival of the birth of Christ -- looking like a brightly wrapped but starkly empty gift box.