Misused: Christmas Cake

The description of Christmas Cake says it's a Japan-exclusive trope to which the rough Western counterpart is Old Maid. Judging from the way the trope's been used, this hasn't been the case in practice.

If we do remove the Japan-exclusivity, we lose the meaning of the trope name, as 25 years old is a specifically Japanese angle to the trope. But if we don't remove the Japan-exclusivity, we'll need to split the trope and come up with a new name for Western examples, as 25 is not "un-marriage-able" by modern Western standards.

Well, if 25 is not unmarrieable by Western standards, then the trope cannot be applied to Western societies. That is, dump all the non-Japanese examples from this trope.

What is the, or is there at all, a similar age for Western women?

I'd be for a thorough clean-up. Japanese only, and replace most wicks with Old Maid as it's applicable to most works, western and other.

edited 4th Jan '15 7:29:22 AM by XFllo

There can be, but it's varied over the course of history. In the 1700-1800's, a woman was getting past "marriageable age" by her mid-to-late 20s. In the 1900s it was more like 30-35. Now it's closer to 40. But this trope isn't broken. It just needs the examples to be cleaned up, to limit them o the ones that make a point that the woman is concerned (or that her friends/family express concern) that she's too old to find a husband when she's in her mid 20s, rather than being "any unmarried woman older than 25".

Christmas Cake has been in TRS at least three times before (it is possible that I missed some others).

The first in Oct 2010 (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=bevv9j0d5omj4qaf6yl8s74n) The second in Dec 2010 ( https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=rhq2bde5qjf5aujnse9hmyjh ) resulted in the creation of Old Maid specifically to split the western examples from the Japanese. The third in Aug 2011 (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1312678247024360100) was as a result of nobody bothering to clean Christmas Cake after Old Maid was created.

Anyway, the split is deliberate. Axe any non-japanese examples on cake and move them to maid - assuming they are valid examples, of course.

edited 4th Jan '15 7:29:43 AM by Zyffyr

The age depends on the context of the work. In Jane Austen's novels, the age is usually about 27 (Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice and Anne Elliot in Persuasion). In contempory society, women wouldn't describe themselves as such and most writers/authors wouldn't either — not being married in your thirties is not a stigma anymore.

edited 4th Jan '15 7:30:13 AM by XFllo

In Japanese works the age is set in stone to 25, even though this is not quite true in RL. The name is also for the specific age of 25, as in Japan you buy a cake for Christmas and well after the 25th no one wants them anymore. In works you see people scrambling for marriage interviews and a bunch of other stuff not seen in western works.

Which is my point exactly. It doesn't fit Western examples because there's no such cutoff at 25 in the West.

Right. The Japanese trope has a hard cut-off of 25. The Western version has no such hard cut-off date — it can be as young as late teens (Hello, Dolly! 's Ermengarde), the late 20's (Persuasion is precisely the example I had in mind.) or up to the 40's currently, although that's more likely to be "I'm getting too old to have a baby and I'm not even married yet!" than strictly about being unmarried.

Most of the examples actually on the page do refer to the Japanese version, with the work either from Japan, or set in Japan, or set in a Japanese cultural-equivalent. I've removed the few that aren't Japanese or Japaenese-based.

edited 4th Jan '15 9:31:24 AM by Madrugada

This is one of those examples where we have a trope for all media, and then a trope Recycled IN JAPAN, and they are the same trope. Old Maid and Christmas Cake are the same trope. What we should do is cut Christmas Cake, make Christmas Cake a redirect to Old Maid, put the Christmas Cake examples in the appropriate media folders, and then add a note to the Old Maid page saying "in Japan, this is called 'Christmas Cake'" and say something about the age 25 threshold.

Failing that, sure, specify Christmas Cake as Japanese-only and cull all non-Japanese examples as well as links to Christmas Cake on non-Japanese work pages.

I'd call Christmas Cake a subtrope of Old Maid, as it's a culture-specific variant with a few added details.

But the only culture-specific details are 1) in Japan, and 2) age 25. It's the same idea—women past a certain age just aren't marriageable. The only thing that makes the Japanese trope unique is the lower age, and even that isn't unique, as 25 or so probably did make a woman an Old Maid in Western culture in days of yore.

Anyway, that's my two cents—or is it four cents, for two posts? Merge tropes under title of Old Maid. If we can't merge tropes under Old Maid, then sort and organize Christmas Cake for only Japanese media, as noted above.

This trope is not broken. It does not need to be fixed, merged, or cut. This has been discussed three times already. (The threads are linked in an earlier post, please read through them.)

All that needed to be done was to have the bad examples removed, and I've done that.

I'm locking this thread.

edited 4th Jan '15 2:30:12 PM by Madrugada