SNA (Tokyo) — A long-term Non-Japanese resident friend, married with a Japanese husband and adult kids, recently told me about a new development in their relationship: Christmas was no longer to be celebrated in their household.

Their children were all grown and didn’t believe in Santa Claus anymore; so no more presents or any big dinner to celebrate the day. They would allow her only a tree.

Why this sudden change of heart? To her surprise, all this time Christmas had been regarded by the family as a nuisance, a cultural imposition on them. Now it was time to grow out of it.

It raises a fundamental issue that someday comes up within any intercultural relationship: How much culture do you give up for the sake of compromise?

This is especially an issue when we expect everyone to understand how important a life event is without explanation. It’s important to observe them just because, well, that was how we were brought up.

We have such cultural observances of ceremonies and traditions in every society, of course, and they offer the trappings of cultural distinctions: births, weddings, funerals, coming-of-age, and other life-stage events… and, of course, annual holidays.

For many Westerners raised in Christian-based traditions, whether devout or secular, Christmas is one of the biggest annual holidays. For me, Japan only made Christmas even bigger.

That came as a surprise, because before Japan I was never really a big fan of Christmas.

My happiest ones were in early childhood, where I got up at the crack of dawn to see what Santa had brought, often during a trip to meet faraway and otherwise disconnected family members, and meet grandparents who weren’t yet too old and crotchety to feel the contagious joy of children.

All Christmases since then were disappointments, reminders of unmitigated joy lost. Someday, perhaps like my elders, I would recapture that magic feeling through my own children.

Then I began a life and a family in Japan. But after several years of December 25 just being a regular work day, I discovered what I was missing–a time of the season where people go out of their way to be just a little kinder and express Christmas greetings; where Christmas songs and caroling exist beyond the department store muzak; where someplace goes beyond tinsel and offers Handel’s Messiah; where you can have not only a day off work, but a dead work week afterwards until January, to reflect on the year gone by and prepare for the next.

Japan simply cannot offer that, given how busy the end of the year is. Companies close their books and corporate drones work even more hours so they can get a day, maybe three, off during New Years.

All this effort comes with a dubious payoff: the cold comfort of sitting around laconically eating osechi ryori; or suffering through dreadfully repetitive and boring variety TV programs (the most interesting, though dark and downbeat, is the NHK program aired just before midnight traveling to temples nationwide listening to the Buddhist bells); or shivering along with crowds on a midnight trip to your local temple or shrine.

For me, December in Japan feels like an emotional desert, followed by a January that is just business as usual. As the years passed, I felt like I was just fast-forwarding through a video tape of a month which I should be pausing and enjoying more.

So as my relationship with my Japanese partner grew beyond canoodling on Christmas Eve to enjoying Santa’s bounty on Christmas Day, I–and many other Westerners I knew–felt that we should create an end-of-year oasis for family fun.

Alas, it’s not guaranteed.

Japanese society often finds unnecessary ways to spoil everyone’s fun, and in this case, Christmas is just one of those things you’re expected to “outgrow” as you get older. It’s like so many of the other expectations of adulthood, including deferred gratification, short vacations, even sexless couples. Those things are for children and the youth, not for “mature adults.”

And now that my above-mentioned friend’s husband finally recruited their adult children to his side, he was frogmarching the family away from all the Santa-silliness.

Surprises like these can be fatal to marriages.

As my divorce attorney once sagely opined, “a marriage is a gamble.” That’s especially true in intercultural relationships. Cultural expectations can reveal a stark reality, which is that what you thought your partner enjoyed, he or she had merely tolerated. This is where slow-burn, long-term culture shock shows just how much you have grown apart, often to a breaking point.

I would argue that people in Japan can be especially susceptible to this, since “culture” is seen as something so unique to Japan that it can’t have much in common with “foreign” things. Doing anything not considered by the omnipresent and ever-alienating Japanese media as “The Japanese Way” means that any compromises can easily be construed as an identity sacrifice, a denial of one’s “Japaneseness.”

That’s a big part of where the gamble lies–is your partner sustainably able to accommodate differences without someday feeling alienated or threatened by them?

So am I saying that foreigners shouldn’t marry Japanese? Of course not! After all, it’s not only an international issue. This sort of culturally-imposed self-perception of identity affects plenty of Japanese couples who marry outside their local region of Japan too, and in fact it can apply to any couple anywhere in which the partners come from distinct cultural backgrounds.

What I am saying is that if culture so widely-observed as, say, Christmas, matters so much that you can’t give it up, you should make sure to find middle ground.

For example, Japan’s homegrown traditions of KFC and Christmas Cakes are a nice addition to the genre. Indulge in them. Dress up as Santa, if that’s your thing.

Make sure to take days off around the end of the year, but especially on December 25. (I’ve found that claiming to your boss that you’re a “Christian,” even if you’ve never darkened a church door in your life, works fine.)

If Christmas songs, trees, and presents cause irritation to others, then keep them to yourself. Find a corner in your personal workspace for a tree stand and put on headphones.

But my advice is that, even if you are living in Japan, observing your cultural traditions within reason should not be treated as a cultural imposition. You should be allowed to re-experience the joys of your formative years.

The logic of “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” should not be used as a cudgel to club all the “foreignness” out of you. At a certain point, it becomes psychologically unhealthy.

Broadly speaking, it’s about time that many Westerners realize that they are actual immigrants to Japan, and like immigrants worldwide, they should understand how immigrants have coped with keeping alive their cultural observances. They should have that statue of Ganesha, the Menorah, the Ramadan Fanous–and yes, the Christmas Tree with Presents underneath–within reach at the appropriate times and places.

Besides, if these traditions involve good moods and good foods, they should be celebrated without guilt, as Japan continues to adjust to its inevitable internationalization. Being a Visible (and Invisible) Minority should also involve being visibly happy about, and observant of, your minority status and needs.

And given how un-fun December is in Japan, such joy just might be welcome and contagious.

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