Kentucky Fried Chicken

We were driving home from church on Christmas Eve when I noticed a queue outside Kentucky Fried Chicken. I honestly thought, these poor Japanese not celebrating Christmas eating KFC all by themselves.

At home after dinner flicking through a local magazine, there was a caption about the annual Christmas queues outside KFC. Hmmm? so I googled "KFC christmas eve tokyo" and this is what wikipedia says

Japan

KFC is often referred to as ケンタッキー (kentakkii, ケンタッキー) in Japanese.

KFC Japan was founded in 1970. A life size statue of the Colonel stands in front of most stores in Japan. Fried chicken is an especially popular dish at Christmas time and on Christmas Eve many families, many of who have made reservations weeks in advance, have their traditional Christmas dinner of Kentucky Fried Chicken at home.

So apparently when KFC first came to Japan, they didn't do too well. This mainly because Japanese don't eat so much meat in their meals. So their first big promotion was over Christmas dressing Colonel Sanders as Santa Claus. Till this year, all KFC's Colonel Sanders statue outside each restaurant is dressed as Santa and they have their busiest sales over the 23, 24, 25 till you need to order your chicken to eat KFC on those days.