Read the linked article… first? Before commenting, you mean? Wut.
What a novel concept!
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If Koreans ate bagels, lox, and cream cheese every Christmas, you can bet there would be threads about it.
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Not Korean, but Japanese. 
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Which I send to non-Jewish family members for their Christmas brunch. 
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I tried that one year but with Popeye’s and red wine instead of KFC. Now I can’t get near A Popeyes.
I heard it was Japanese not Korean.
And indeed, there was already, albeit hardly commented on, post about it here on Hungry Onion.:
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That doesn’t surprise me at all, though. Similar enough to karaage / tonkatsu.
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The only surprising thing to me about the connection between KFC and Christmas in Japan is that nearly all the Japanese people I know, and in living there for about 20 years on and off between 1984 and this year…I know a lot of them, is that they seem to think (or used to until Americans like me straightened them out about it) that Americans also eat KFC for Christmas.
And KFC has gotten so popular at Christmas in Japan that KFC now takes reservations for picking up your fried chicken meal! And in addition, nearly all the convenience stores and some other fast food chains also now push fried chicken for Christmas.
I’ve only had KFC for Christmas once in Japan on a visit from the US when I was staying with a friend and his family for the holidays. He thought I would be homesick for an American Christmas meal and bought a bucket of fried chicken for us all to eat. I didn’t want him to be disappointed or even shocked for him to find out that, A) Americans don’t (usually) eat KFC for Christmas and B) that as a Jew, I don’t really celebrate the holiday and therefore just ate and enjoyed the meal.
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That is absolutely fascinating! I wonder where that impression comes from? Movies? TV shows?
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It’s briefly (but not well) touched on in the HO link I posted. Within that link, the poster kindly copied/pasted the transcript of the story so that (I’m guessing) no one would be forced to click on the link he posted (which was from the BBC).
And the updated story posted by @Google_Gourmet , from of all places, Conde Naste India! has a few other bits of pertinent info as well.
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That tickles me.
Tell your Japanese friends that on the eve of December 25th, The Colonel trades in his White suit for his Red Suit! Grows out his beard at bit, and moonlights as St. Nick for one night per year!!
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Taken by me in front of a KFC in Shizuoka, Japan on November 30, 2021. And AFAIK, every KFC has their Colonel Sanders dressed the same way each season.
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I met a woman from Warsaw, Poland, when I lived in Madrid, Spain, for a couple of years in the early 1980s. We were both doing art history research at the Prado. She went back to Warsaw and I visited her there in 1983. She was a devout Catholic like many Poles. I was raised Protestant in the US south and lived in the Northeast and around SF since leaving for college.
We had a conversation about Christmas Eve customs and we were mutually astonished at the variance. I knew many American Catholics but had never heard that traditional Catholics don’t eat meat on Christmas Eve, or the eve before important religious holidays. She was amazed to hear that American Catholics (as far as I knew at the time) and Protestants had no prohibition against eating meat on the eve of such occasions.
Then a few years later I heard about the Feast of 7 Fishes on Christmas Eve, that some sources say is more Italian-American than Italian, to comply with the meat-free eating on important Eves. I have no idea of the veracity of that claim.
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Earlier this year I saw a movie called Feast Of The Seven Fishes with Madison Iseman. It’s about the formentioned custom observed in. small Pennsylvania town. It’s a good foodie movie, (a big Chowhound topic.)
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Certainly my mother, raised Irish Catholic, did not have meat on Xmas eve in the years she was growing up. I wasn’t raised in the church so I don’t know when it stopped being de riguer.
Unrelatedly, I really enjoyed some of the traditional Christmas Eve food in Poland when I lived there (93-93), specifically the delicious clear beet soup with homemade dumplings. I can’t remember what else I was served, tbh.
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We always have fish on Xmas Eve…I’m a lapsed Catholic. I mostly follow the old Catholic food rules.
Besides the Italian Feast of the Seven Dishes, carp on Xmas Eve was pretty common in the Catholic parts of Central Europe.
The Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic Vigilia with 12 meatless dishes on Xmas Eve influenced my Central Euro Catholic family’s Xmas Eve, as well. That is still common in the Ukrainian community in Canada. The Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Toronto even sells a takeout Vigilia now, through the restaurant operating out of its basement
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Oh yea CARP how could I forget !?! Every polish household had a carp in the tub on Xmas Eve. I prob blocked it out because at the time I was a vegetarian.
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Seven Fishes. Obviously. Autocorrect. LOL
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I story I heard, from decades back . . . many decades back . . .
was many Jewish household went with Chinese on Christmas because everything else was closed.
curious, likely not really ‘all true’ . . .
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