In Japan, December 25th is not a public holiday.
And yet, by the time the morning arrives, the city already wears the exhausted, quiet face of a host after the party has ended.
The dazzling lights that flooded the streets until yesterday grow subdued.
The crowds thin out visibly.
Christmas cakes and ornaments are slapped with discount stickers, and restaurants suddenly fall silent.
Places that were teeming with life just hours ago now seem to be taking a long, deep breath.
We still have to work. Daily life grinds on.
Yet, on this day, reality never quite feels whole.
Despite not being a holiday, the very air seems to have surged ahead toward the year-end.
In Japan, Christmas has long been treated less as a religious rite and more as a seasonal event.
It wasn’t so much a resistance to faith as it was a lack of necessity to integrate it into our core lives.
Thus, institutionally, December 25th remains just an “ordinary day.”
Still, seeing the entire society come to such a collective pause, I find myself thinking: perhaps we could be more flexible.
