heronfoot:

Day 6: Christmas/Winter holidays

Genji puts up some decorations.

(Some fun info + a lot of preamble: though Christmas is ostensibly celebrated in Japan, Christmas Eve tends to have stronger significance, and all-in-all it’s mostly seen as a romantic day for couples rather than one for family or as religiously significant.

But in terms of practice, Christmas as it is treated in the West aligns more closely with Japanese New Year–Oshogatsu–wherein people are given time off from work, put up decorations, send cards to loved ones, visit places of worship–ie Shinto and Buddhist shrines–and give gifts. Here, Genji’s putting together a kadomatsu, a type of pine and bamboo arrangement that you put outside your house and decorate during New Year’s in order to welcome kami. It’s a bit like a Christmas tree! Although naturally they’re not nearly as ostentatious as Christmas trees generally are haha)