Millions of Japanese families celebrate Christmas every single year by feasting on a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken thanks to an incredibly successful corporate marketing campaign launched in 1974.

A closer look

Millions of Japanese families celebrate Christmas every single year by feasting on a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken thanks to an incredibly successful corporate marketing campaign launched in 1974. Since Japan had very few Christians and no established Christmas traditions, an ambitious KFC manager completely fabricated the idea that Americans traditionally ate fried chicken to celebrate the birth of Jesus. The deception worked so flawlessly that you now have to order your holiday bucket weeks in advance just to avoid waiting in line for hours on Christmas Eve. It is a stunning triumph of late-stage capitalism, demonstrating how a fast-food corporation essentially hijacked a major global religious holiday by convincing an entire nation that Colonel Sanders was basically Santa Claus