In the 1980s, a woman unmarried by 25 was dismissed as "Christmas cake" — thrown out on Dec. 26. These days the big number is 31, and women unmarried by that age are "New Year's Eve noodles," noodles being a typical New Year's Eve dish.
in Japan where unmarried women over the age of 25 used to be called "Christmas cake" -- past their best, just like a cream and strawberry pastry popular in the country during the holiday.
Rather than wishing me well, he made a reference to my being a "kurisumasu keeki (Christmas cake)." In the 1980s, single Japanese women were liked to cakes that people in Japan consume on or before Christmas day: They are both much in demand for a limited time, the cake until the 25th day of December, the woman until the 25th year of her life, and undesirable thereafter.
In Japan Christmas cakes are airy sponges, often made with strawberries: highly perishable. Hence, a cruel saying: Japanese women who remained unmarried past the age of 25 used to be referred to as Christmas cakes, implying that they had passed their use-by date.
The cakes go on discount once Dec. 25 rolls around — a fact that gave birth to an unfortunate bit of old Japanese slang: "Christmas cake" was used to refer to an unmarried woman who was over 25 and thus, considered past her prime.
SEIKO, a 35-year-old journalist in Tokyo, is what the Japanese refer to as “New Year Noodles”. The year ends on December 31st, and, by analogy, the period when a Japanese woman is deemed a desirable marriage prospect ends after 31. It could have been worse: the slang term used to be “Christmas cake” because a woman’s best-before date was considered to be 25.
Japanese women used to be labelled Christmas cake if they weren’t married by the age of 25. That age marker, nuanced by the 25th of December, is also the date after which a Christmas cake is considered old and stale, or past its use-by-date. Nowadays a woman’s marriageable age is compared to Japanese New Year’s noodles that are eaten on December 31.